


Straight from the moon to the shore

by Sunnystar



Series: Death and related matters [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves Deserves Better, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Codependency, Creepy, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Luther Hargreeves Being an Asshole, Minor Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Non-Graphic Violence, Protective Ben Hargreeves, Pseudo-Incest, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, dont like that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23744257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunnystar/pseuds/Sunnystar
Summary: Running away is a lot harder when you've come back from the dead and your siblings are each damaged in their own precious way.(AKA How Ben and Klaus managed to run away with their siblings.)
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: Death and related matters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703422
Comments: 84
Kudos: 257
Collections: In Angst We Trust, Klaus, the umbrella academy





	1. till I learn'd it all was dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gh0sts_t1m3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gh0sts_t1m3/gifts), [happymango](https://archiveofourown.org/users/happymango/gifts).



> @Paleodubstepbb? I wanted to gift this to you too? But I can't tag you? So lmk how I can show my appreciation lol.
> 
> To rest of y'll, can I just say I would die for you? Enjoy the first chapter!

_Follow everywhere I go_

_Top of all the mountains or valley low_

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

> **The God of Feathers**

Klaus was pressed under a dusty tarp, trying to breathe in through his nose. It was almost nightfall, he told himself, only a few hours away. He could hold on until then.

He was hidden in a dark hallway, far away from the rest of his family. He’d spent most of the day sleeping- his body wasn’t used to doing things anymore, and despite his annoyance at his newfound weakness, it did make the hiding easier.

Ben had deposited him here, creeping in through the servants’ entrance. He’d carried Klaus most of the way, holding his hand throughout.

“My brain knows you’re here, but like…I don’t know.” His brother had looked away as he said that, eyes swirling green and pink in turns. Klaus heard his unspoken statement. _I know you’re here but the Horrors don’t want to let go._

_I don’t want to let go._

So there’s that.

Klaus wished he could go back to sleep, but it was too hot in the room, and there was no ventilation to be had. His breathing is too loud, and something rattles in his chest.

He wishes he wasn’t here.

“I’ll be back tonight, alright? Just stay put, I’ll sneak you some clothes and lots of food.” His brother made a motion to move away, but he darted back quickly and pressed against Klaus, giving him a soft peck on the forehead. He moved away, fingers twitching, eyes wide with worry and longing.

“Tonight,” he repeats, and Klaus watches him as he closes the door, gently. That was hours ago, back when the sun was still high. He can see a sliver of the window from here, and the sky is turning an alluring shade of purple.

The servants’ quarters are at a good level beneath the rest of the house because the mansion was built on slanted land, so this is the only hallway at this level. Klaus didn’t quite know how Ben found it. He’ll get that story from him someday.

Later, he will ask for his old tarot cards, and his brother will blush in embarrassment, revealing that he used to play with them every day to remind him of Klaus.

Later, Ben would read a novel to him, and hold him as they fell asleep.

Later, they could worry about the future, about the others, about their dear father, and what he could do to them.

But for now, Klaus closes his eyes and falls asleep.

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

_She_ _knew she was hypnotized_

_And walking on cold thin ice_

> #### The Art of Being Afraid

Vanya Hargreeves would never admit it, but she was afraid of her brother.

It was a terrible thing to think, and worse to experience, especially because Vanya’s love for him hadn’t quite withered away, so she was left behind with an odd mixture of wariness and worry.

Because her brother, when they were younger, was one of the only truly kind people in her life. He was friendly and sweet and kind and brought her gifts and she didn’t feel like she was damaged around him. That they were different because he was extraordinary and she was…well…ordinary.

She and Five had a strange friendship, one born out of the fact that Five never considered her competition the way he did the rest, but Ben? Ben forewent the competition entirely. Instead, he adamantly refused to run at all.

One made her think, and the other made her appreciate her lowly position.

Because Ben didn’t hide behind showy lies, false jealousy to make her feel terrible. There was no need to because she saw the pain on his face after every mission, let him cry on her shoulder when he vehemently railed against their father for making him kill when he didn’t want to. Vanya wanted to be extraordinary, sure, but she never wanted to be Ben, and maybe that made all the difference. She loved him sincerely, and she craved his company the way he craved hers.

Ben’s company, of course, did come with a price.

Specifically, his own wonder twin, Klaus.

It wasn’t that Vanya disliked Klaus. No one could truly dislike him, as annoying as he could be. It’s just that to her, their relationship was confusing. Klaus was the antithesis of Ben; loud and dramatic with a penchant for hand gestures. Who she was certain had ADHD or dyslexia or both, because she’d never so much as seen him read a book for fun.

Klaus was smart, don’t get it twisted. It’s just that Klaus was different from them.

Five, Vanya, and Ben were all quiet in their own ways. Five was quiet because he was prideful, genuinely understanding that he was a genius and that they couldn’t understand. They were too slow for him; if the rest of them were traveling in miles, Five was bounding about in lightyears. Intellectually, they were incompatible.

Ben was quiet because he was shy because he hated attention. He already got enough attention for the Horrors, and when he realized that people only wanted him for them, he’d decided to not draw attention to himself at all. If they would only notice his little tummy travelers, he would make it so they didn’t notice him at all.

Vanya, of course, was different in the fact that her silence wasn’t self-imposed, but really just the byproduct of serial neglect, verbal abuse, and isolation. She was quiet because no one wanted to hear what she had to say.

But Klaus? Klaus was vibrant and flashy and inappropriate. Klaus was loud when he should’ve shut up, poking and prodding the bear, sticking his nose into everything, dragging Ben along for the ride.

Vanya, at first, had thought Ben was annoyed by Klaus’s attention. That Ben must have hated how robust and intense Klaus was.

One day, after Klaus had dragged Ben away, she decided that she had it. She was about to step in, tell Klaus what she really thought, but then she’d gotten close to his room, and heard them murmuring softly. She stepped to the side of the door, listening through the cracks.

“-do you think he’ll let go of us, once we’re eighteen?”

“I dunno. I think we’ll just have to make a run for it. He just can’t stop us when we’re eighteen, legally.” Someone shifts, and Vanya freezes.

“When has he ever cared about being legal, Klaus? Pretty sure sending out children to kill some goons is the height of illegal.”

“I mean…he’d have to let you go right? When you get to college?” Vanya relaxes, hearing no one move.

“That’s a big if. If I get into college, if I have a scholarship, if.”

“Nah. You’ll definitely get into some college. Maybe an Ivy League? And if you do get into an ivy, I think he’d pay for it too. The old bugger would be stupid to not.”

“So you and me, just hiding in a college dorm forever?”

“Obviously not, mi Hermano! We’ll have to drag V and Diego along too. Maybe an apartment, somewhere cheap.”

They continued to speak, probably, but Vanya had stepped back, hand on her chest, confused and pleased.

Klaus was thinking about her? Klaus had plans with Ben and he’d even thought about how they’d take her along as well?

Something inside her melted, and slowly, Klaus captured a place in her heart too. Slowly, she began to see that it was Ben who grabbed Klaus’s hand, it was Ben who came up with some of their more harebrained schemes. It was Ben who snuck into Allison’s room and ‘borrowed’ her clothes for Klaus. Suddenly, their relationship was a lot less one-sided. No one was being dragged along. Instead, they walked side by side, bounding along in life and rolling with the punches.

So Klaus and Ben were a team. And Vanya couldn’t even find in herself to be envious, because after all, she had Five. And so, she subsisted on these interactions, and some days, she forgot about how much she wanted to not exist.

And then Five vanished.

The wonderful and terrible thing about not finding a body is this: you can tell yourself that your brother is indeed, not dead, but instead gallivanting around the globe, trying to find a way back, that he’s exploring and laughing and enjoying himself.

That he isn’t dead.

_(Of course, such train of thought brings up questions, lots of questions. The most important being, of course, is why your brother didn’t come back for you.)_

In those dark days, Vanya fell apart silently. Like a mouse. And in those dark times, it was Ben (and Klaus) who helped prop her up, who came and woke her up from her bed, who helped her survive. Who dealt with her tears of sorrow and scream of anguish. It was Ben who was there.

So she binds her heart to Ben and trusts him with herself, and slowly, she stitches herself back together. Slowly, under Klaus and Ben’s guidance, she started to smile again. She started thinking about things other than Five, and she was healthier for it.

Just as she was maybe repairing herself, maybe putting herself back together, Ben and Luther leave for a mission. Vanya plays her violin even as her fingertips bruise purple, and Klaus does fuck all, and they're doing fine.

And then Klaus does a line of cocaine off the bathroom countertop.

And Vanya is livid, and she can’t even pinpoint why, exactly.

Vanya is silently furious because Ben would be furious, and she refuses to talk to him. He brushes it off because they both know she’d have forgiven him by the time he came back. It’s just how they are.

And then their father declares extra training for Klaus, and Vanya doesn’t even say goodbye. Why would she, when he’d be back soon enough?

And then hours pass and Ben comes back, bounding up the stairs, yelling for Klaus. He finds her in her room and asks her if she’s seen him, and she says no and doesn’t tell him about their father taking him to training.

She’s still mad at Klaus, so she doesn’t speak up. She’s sure Ben will find him anyway though.

One day goes by, and Ben is getting more and more worried by the second. She attempts to distract him, just so he’d stop pacing around, but he just runs away to another hallway to search for him.

She sees his chewed up fingernails and his bruised knees and the way his eyes flit around in every room as if searching for any hiding places Klaus might be in.

She sees him scaling the ladder to the attic and she hears him grinding his teeth when he sleeps and his eyes are red-rimmed and he keeps muttering under his breath about Klaus and suddenly,

Vanya is worried too.

She searches in her own way, asking Mom if Klaus was back, asking if he’d left the property. She plays Klaus’s favorite song and waits to see if there’s a response from somewhere inside the walls. She asks Allison to rumor him back into his room, but nothing changes, and Vanya is terrified.

And as each meal goes by, she can see how increasingly angsty Ben gets, how angry and how terrified he is, and she wishes Klaus would come back, wherever he was, and that their father would let him go because Vanya is certain Ben is going to snap.

And despite her seeing it coming, she’s still horror-stricken by what happens next.

Ben thrusts his knife into the table at dinner, seventy-two hours after Klaus was last seen, and something churns in her stomach, something twists at the parallel between his and Five’s actions. She doesn’t dare glance at their father, afraid of his reaction.

Because suddenly, Ben is no longer Ben, his eyes mottled with wraithlike colors, and his voice drops several octaves, and he speaks with multiple voices, and Vanya feels nauseous as Ben and the Horrors speak in tandem. She can see the twisting under his shirt, the paleness of his skin, and suddenly she wonders exactly what Klaus’s training was, why it required him to be gone for so long.

She should have spoken up, she should have said goodbye.

 **“Where!” They** demand from their father, and the dining hall is in chaos, in absolute anarchy, because Luther gets up and tries to say something to Ben, yelling something about disrespect, and suddenly something shifts and there’s something pulsing under Ben’s skin and Vanya almost wants to warn their father than he’s poking the beast, that there will be consequences untold-

And Ben snaps and he has their father in a chokehold, eyes blackening with sheer rage and the Allison and Luther are trying to calm Ben down, and Diego is sharpening his knives because their brother is gone and there’s no way to get him back, is there? And Vanya slips under the table and sobs to herself in pain and the wall falls apart and chunks of plaster flies as Ben throws Luther into the wall and-

Suddenly, everything stops. Ben is suddenly frozen, and he turns around and dashes out, into the yard, into the green estate,

And Allison is rumoring Luther to be okay and Diego grabs her hand and they both run after Ben, chasing him like bloodhounds on a trail, and Vanya doesn't even know why she’s chasing him, because she can’t hurt him, can’t hurt the monsters under his skin, but something tells her Ben is going to find Klaus, will stop at nothing to find Klaus, but the question is:

_Will Klaus be okay when they find him?_

And she feels sick as they approach a cemetery with marble structures all around and The Horrors cut through the door like it’s butter and Diego makes a movement to dart inside after him, but Vanya tackles him and holds him back as Luther and Allison sprint to them, and Luther’s face is twisted into a snarl, and it seems like Ben is going to be stuck inside the mausoleum, in a more permanent form, but then Ben comes back out and-

He’s holding a body.

_Klaus’s body._

And he can’t stop sobbing, and the look on his face is terrible like he wishes he was dead instead, a look full of anguish and self-hatred and pain. He looks like a withered corpse, like something integral to him as been forcibly torn out, like maybe his beating heart was pulled out of his chest.

She closes her eyes and sees Klaus’s body, and she hugs Ben tightly, and he doesn’t hug her back.

Because the world is topsy-turvy now, and Klaus will never open his eyes again.

Ben’s eyes are frozen, shocked. Like he can’t comprehend a world without Klaus. And maybe he can’t, because she’s heard their plans, heard of their future. And now that future doesn’t exist. Can’t exist.

And then Vanya sees something in Ben shatter, that remains broken even after they’ve buried Klaus after she gets them to mark the grave after Luther carries him to his bed.

Something remains shattered, and Vanya sees him fall apart piece by piece, as their father clears out Klaus's room, as their father tries to kill Ben, as their father erects a statue of Klaus. She sees him fall apart with every step and she tries so, so hard to put him back together but the pieces just don’t seem to fit anymore without Klaus, and she can hear Ben crying every single night, but she’s too scared to go and comfort him now.

Because Ben is frightening now. He is her brother, and she loves him somehow, but-

But Ben without Klaus, it seems, is nothing but unchecked ruthlessness. He is sharp and dangerous and his wrath is unending, and Vanya is scared witless.

He lashes out at everyone, he kills without remorse, he comes back home with blood-stained clothes and he doesn’t smile at anything. He nearly kills Luther when he makes a stray comment about Klaus, and Vanya doesn’t know if she’s more scared of him or scared for him.

Ben lurks in the darkness now, staying outside, late, getting ready for college with all the zeal of a psychopath, and Vanya sees her brother change before her eyes.

He is no longer her brother, is he? Her soft-spoken brother could never laugh gleefully after killing a room full of men. Her brother used to cry about killing, but now it seems as if the bloodshed is the only thing that breaks him out of his reverie.

She watches him, and worries about him, and wonders if she’s still his sister.

She thinks about how Klaus is gone, and how now she’s lost three of her siblings.

[And then there’s the whole incident with the pills.

No, she _does not_ want to talk about it.]

They don’t celebrate their birthday anymore, but she whispers happy birthday to herself and each of her siblings. It’s tradition and a solemn goodbye, because she came into this world alone and it seems that will be her lot in life, loneliness.

She sits in the attic that night, alone in the dark. She plans on falling asleep there because no one will care if she does, because she’s just Number Seven, ordinary number 7, and it doesn't matter if she lives or dies.

It’s dark and she’s not suicidal.

She’s not.

[Except maybe if she dies she’ll see _Five and Klaus_ again, and she can pretend her life _hasn’t gone to shit_.]

The ladder creaks and Vanya’s breath catches.

She curls up in the blanket further, hiding in the corner.

The ladder groans under the weight and Vanya’s eyes are open, and her heart rate accelerates.

In the dark, she can barely see his face, but Vanya knows it’s him.

Ben.

[Does he want to kill her? Would she let him? Would she even try to fight him if he bit into her throat and _ripped out her jugular_? She doesn’t know anymore seeing as death seems like a long rest after years of fear and longing.]

Something catches in her breath as he comes closer and closer and closer and he’s taller than her and she can’t get enough air in her lungs and then-

His arms are around her, and he buries his face in her hair. She’s frozen.

“Sorry.” She’s still frozen, listening to his heartbeat, his human heartbeat, and feels the warmth of his skin, and this is-

This is okay, isn’t it?

Her brother, much taller than her now, with his Fuschia and key lime whorls instead of pupils, is holding her, and Vanya’s skin isn’t so cold anymore.

This is okay, right? Ben can’t hurt her if there’s nothing left to hurt, nothing left to tear into pieces at all. She is unbreakable because there is no part of her that hasn’t broken already.

This is okay.

Vanya slowly brings her arms around him too.

Things don’t get instantly fixed after that. Ben still kills without batting an eye, and their father can’t control him anymore. No one can, and she feels torn in two about him. Feels scared of him somedays, loves him other days. And life goes on.

The Ben of her childhood is gone, but sometimes his eyes look at her and they aren’t filled with rage or sorrow.

Sometimes they’re light and soft. Sometimes he brings her sweets again, and slowly, slowly, Vanya relaxes.

Just a little.

Because Vanya is still afraid of him, and still tenses around him, but sometimes-

Sometimes, she’ll play one of Klaus’s favorite songs, and Ben will sit outside her bedroom door, and sometimes he’ll come sleep in her room, on the floor, and Vanya lets him.

And that’s enough for now.

That’s as much as they can take, and Vanya is slowly coming to terms with the new normal.

So Vanya shouldn’t be suspicious of Ben sneaking out of his room this late at night, holding a small bag.

Right?

They're fine...aren't they?

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

_Everything you want in gold_

_I'll be the magic story you've been told_

> #### Death of the Winter Sun

Klaus is woken up when someone shakes him, and he’s ready to claw at them, but Ben’s face shines in the moonlight.

“Hey,” he says, rubbing his eyes. His brother smiles at him, eyes twinkling.

“Hey, yourself. I got soap and some clothes. Time to take a bath.” Klaus pouts. He doesn’t want to cut into their time together.

“Come on, Klaus. You’re absolutely filthy.” Klaus nods, absentmindedly, before looking at him and asking,

“Would it be weird if I asked you to stay? Even as I’m bathing? I just… don't want to be alone right now.” He mutters something under his breath, and Ben pauses.

“It would be weird, yeah, but I don’t want to let you out of my sight either, so…” Ben shrugs, hiding a wry smile. “Get yourself settled up in the tub. I grabbed some of Allison’s bubble bath.” Klaus reaches out and holds his arm as Ben shows him to the nearby bathroom, where Ben has already filled up the water.

There’s a small little tub shoved into the bathroom, and Ben turns away as Klaus strips and jumps inside, giggling as the scent of lavender pervades the air.

Klaus can’t help but splash around a bit, pushing the water around. It’s his first bath in four years, and it’s sensory heaven.

“You can turn back now,” he says, shaping up a bubble beard. Ben turns around and snorts.

“You look like an off-brand Santa Klaus. Wash behind your ears, dammit.” Klaus mock glares at him before scrubbing his face, his neck, his ears. He takes his time, focusing on each limb and between his fingers. He leans back when he’s done.

Only for Ben to click his tongue in annoyance, before reaching over.

“You forgot your hair, dumbass.” Ben slowly begins rinsing out Klaus’s curls, pulling the dirt out, making Klaus lean back. Klaus nearly falls asleep, but Ben slips an arm underneath him and holds him up so that he’s almost floating.

Ben tries to wash section by section, carefully, enjoying it a little. Klaus’s hair is still baby soft.

Eventually, though, the water turns cold, and Ben turns around as Klaus grabs the towel and steps out of the tub. He’s wrapped the towel at his underarms, so it looks like he’s wearing a makeshift dress. Ben leads him over to a different room, this one smaller but cleaner, and Klaus sits on the bed, pulling his feet up.

Ben sits on the bed, behind him, and they are quiet as Ben gently rubs and dries Klaus’s hair.

It’s surprisingly domestic, even though the entire situation reeks of irony. When they were younger, it was Klaus who would dry Ben’s hair after a pari=ticularly bloody mission, soothing his skin with lotion after Ben had rubbed himself raw.

“Ben?” Klaus begins, voice uncertain.

“Hm?”

“Are we going to run away?” And Ben stops drying his hair.

“I don’t know, Klaus.”

“What are we going to do then?”

“I really don’t know anymore.”

“What’s stopping us from leaving right now?”

Ben pulled Klaus back to his chest, pressing his face into his freshly washed hair.

“What about Vanya? And Diego? How are we going to get them to come if we don’t have a plan?”

“Can’t our plan be you going to college and us getting an apartment?”

“I mean…that is a plan, Klaus. But we need more than that, right? Money and a place to stay and… and you’re a kid now, Klaus. A kid that’s legally been gone for ages, someone who’s been declared dead. We’ll need fake IDs and documentation...”

Klaus is quiet for a while.

“I guess…we’re both stuck here for a while, then. I’ll have to hide for longer?” And Ben lets out a shuddering breath.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice raw. Klaus doesn’t understand what he’s apologizing for, but he doesn’t ask.

“It’s okay Ben. I can wait a little longer.”

“I’m so sorry, Klaus.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” And Klaus lets Ben hold him, wears the clothes Ben gives him, lets Ben bring him food, let’s Ben do whatever he wants, because Ben waited for him, and now, it’s Klaus’s turn.

Even if it means that he’s stuck inside for months.

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

_Give you everything you’ve been dreaming of_

_Just let me in, oooh_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know this series is based primarily on Ben and Klaus, but Creepy!Ben is totally valid and our boy is a wreck™. Also, I love Vanya, and she is important™ to the story because, as you know, they're running away with her.
> 
> And next time, we shall see each sibling discovering Klaus, Ben stealing shit, Klaus being terrifying after realising the ghosts aren't gone, and a sneak peak at diego being a mama's boy. 
> 
> And Grace, of course, is our Queen.
> 
> Love you guys- I fricking love the comments! I used a lot of ideas from yall for this fic, so feel free to give me ideas. Or just tell me if it sucks lol.


	2. tell what visions have their home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego can't see ghosts, but he sees Klaus, and Grace isn't entirely there.

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

_She grew up within her castle walls_

_Now and then she tried to run_

> **Guardian of the Roses**

She [singular] possesses a long [infinite, impressive] memory. 

** ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ **

**memory**

mem·o·ry | noun

: the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms

: remembrance (erected a statue in memory of the hero)

: a capacity for showing effects as the result of past treatment or for returning to a former condition—used especially of a material (such as metal or plastic)

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

She [singular] remembers her youngest [numerical] daughter’s first smile [Vanya] and fifth son’s last actions [Five] and she remembers her second son speaking without a stutter [Diego].

Specifically, she [singular] remembers the last time she saw her fourth son [Klaus].

She [singular] is not there when her sixth son [Benjamin] holds her creator [uncapitalized] against the wall.

If someone had asked, she would have to admit that she had delayed her entry with the first aid kit as long as she could. Her calculations suggested delaying would result in permanent damage.

She [singular] was not there when her fourth son [Klaus] was buried. She is housebound, and she [singular] must take care of her injured creator [uncapitalized] and she made certain her [manic] smile was on full display.

He [singular] believed she [singular] was glitching. She [singular] does not correct him.

As she [singular] has in the past [14 years and 6 months], she is once again been reminded [memory] of her predecessor, who, unlike her [singular] was made of flesh and bone. Some days [5110.3547 days] it is easier to believe they are the same person [being].

What would [she] do? Her living _[blood and bone]_ twin?

  
Some days [1460.8906 days] she feels something [placeholder] that feels [irrelevant programming] like [simile] loss [the absence of].

[Her sons, Klaus and Five, are gone.]

[She would like to see them.] [Error- unnecessary sentiment.]

Her son [Benjamin] is all sharp edges and anger [rage] and he does not speak to her [singular] and his face is impassive [forcefully blank] when he sees her but his eyes [smolder] with anger.

She [singular] does not know what to do [appropriate course of action?]

[Unsure. Hesitance. Worry. Irrelevant programming.]

  
What would [she] do? 

Her son [Benjamin] is angry at her[singular]. Her son [Benjamin] is angry at everyone [Pogo, creator [uncapitalized], 1, 2, 3…7].

She does not know how to fix this [calculating probability of serum bringing back Klaus-0.00%].

She does not know how to bring her sons back. 

But she will lose another if she lets this go [to end, to the extent, to the final rest.]  
  
She remembers the statue of her fourth son [Klaus] her creator [uncapitalized] had erected.

It does not resemble him, and if she was programmed to feel [irrelevnat programming], she would label this emotion [hatred].

  
She [singular] calculated the percentage (45%) of rage her sixth son [Benjamin] would exhibit at her[singular] asking to see the burial place [body].

Her sixth son [Benjamin] seems [placeholder, estimation] to go through [experience] a number [estimation: five] separate emotions [irrelevent programming].

He gestures and leads her away to the edge of the property, and each step she takes comes with [Warning! Warning! Out of Bounds!] pain [irrelevant programming].

“We buried him here, that night. Here’s the marker we made.” He [Benjamin] gestures towards the uneven [unlevel, jagged] marble [calcite (CaCO3)]. He [Benjamin] looks upset [angry, lost, upset, sorrowful]. She [singular] moves to comfort him [singular] but he [Benjamin] flinches away.

She[singular] does not say anything [no auditory output] and sits down [loosened the levels in the lower joint area] beside the grave [her son, Klaus].

She [singular] presses her hands' palms down [metacarpus] over her son’s [Klaus’s] grave [remains]. She [singular] lowers her head [cephalon] and presses her ear [auricle] against the ground and closes her eyes [shuts her palpebra].

What would [she] do?

“Hello, Klaus,” she [singular] says, and her son [Benjamin] jerks up and looks at her in surprise [awe, bemusement]. “I’ve come to visit you.” She [singular] pauses despite not needing to breathe.

“I apologize for my tardiness, darling. Your father,” [Benjamin jerks in the background-peripheral sensors], “has programmed me to only stay within certain parameters, and I have finally worked around them.” 

Her son [Benjamin], is frozen, and she [singular] does not look at him.  
“I wanted to sing you a song you used to love.” Her [singular] titanium chest expands as she [singular] loads the lyrics inside [Guten Abend, Gute Nacht].

Ben sits on the other side of the grave, and he tentatively lays his hand over hers.

“Guten Abend, gute Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht, mit Näglein besteckt, Schlupf unter die Deck,” she vocalizes softly as if her son [Klaus] will wake up [awaken] and hear. 

She is programming and wires. Humans do not come back to life, her programming tells her so, that's why she was built.

Dead bodies of the nannies [caretakers, babysitters, au pairs, workers, servants] before her.

Did her son [Klaus] see them?

[Unnecessary sentiment, fans on to cool down.] She pauses as her son [Ben] squeezes her hand. She [singular] smiles [expresses tenderness].

"Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, wirst du wieder geweckt, morgen früh, wenn Gott will, wirst du wieder geweckt.” She hums [vibrates] before repeating the stanza once more, voice filling with more feeling [irrelevent programming]. She [singular] hums [vibrates] the tune once more, and her peripheral sensors indicate that her son [Benjamin] is crying silently.

She reaches [elongates her arms] for him and he falls into her arms, black hair spiking up against her pressed blue dress. She soothes [calms to regulate breathing] him with gentle hand pats.

“There, there.” This only makes him cry harder, shaking in her arms. She [singular] holds still, shifting every so often as her human behavior mimicry program suggests. Her son is wailing something [placeholder] almost unintelligible.

She [singular] waits until his sobs peter out into little hiccups. She [singular] closes her eyes and presses her cheek against his hair. She [singular] will remember this moment forever.

She [singular] wants to beg [unecessary sentiment] him to not be angry [livid, wrathful, ruthless] at her. 

Even if she [singular] is angry [self-loathing, hateful, grieving] at herself.

[Warning! Excessive emotional programming! Shut down?]

Instead, she says, “I have a perfect memory.” Her son [Benjamin] stiffens, but she goes on. “I remember everything from your childhood, and I remember everything about that day.” She keeps looking past him, at the marble marker. 

She [singular], Grace Hargeeves, built upon the bones of Margaret Grace Powell, has a perfect memory, with a perfectly shaped boy and a headful of preserved hair, and she has never belonged to herself.

She [singular] belongs to him, and he [creator, master, builder] makes her his metal creature [automan, creature, sentient but not], unable to interfere.

She[singular] is not Margaret Grace Powell, no matter how she[singular] tries.

  
Gr4c3 cannot say what she [singular] wants [irrelevant programming], but there are always ways around programs.

“And I know who caused it, and I know I am helpless to confront him.” 

She [singular] tilts her neck downwards, eyes holding his. “And you will be helpless so long as you stay.” So you must leave is unspoken, but he [6] pulls himself out of her arms, teeth bared.

“If I leave, if I leave and never look back, then I’m just abandoning him like everyone else!” His eyes flare with anger, and she feels [unessecary sentiment] fear [caution!].

“But Klaus is dead.” She[singular] says, tilting her head, observing. He [Ben] looks like he is going to scream at her, but she [singular] says, “ And the rest of them are not.” He [Ben] stops, head tilted.

“What?”

“When you leave, will you consign them to death too?” Ben is shaking his head, not a negative response, more an expression of being overwhelmed. 

“I…I’m not…they wouldn’t want…Klaus was…” Her son’s breathing is shallow, and she [singular] stops, recognizing the symptoms [shortness of breath, the wetness of eyes, panic attack] and she places her hand in front of him, humming.

"So good evening and good night, with roses bedight. Set with cloves as you rest, snuggle up in your nest.” His breathing evens out, and her son [Benjamin] looks at her, and she [singular] decides to continue. 

“In the morn - if god deign, you'll awaken again. In the morn - if god deign, you'll awaken again.” She [singular] does not particularly understand humanity’s obsession with their creator. Her creator resided in the same abode as she did, and she was resigned [dissapointed in] to his behavior.

She [singular] remembers the rest of that day, she remembers carrying her son to bed, just as she had when he was a child. 

She [singular] remembers.

She [singular] possesses a long [infinite, impressive] memory, and that memory reminds her that yes, the pantry was stocked yesterday, but now several items are missing.

If she [singular] rewinds the tapes in the kitchen, she [singular] would find her son [Benjamin] taking them.

If she [singular]rewound the audio clips from last night, she [singular] would see her undead son [4] skipping over and sitting on her kitchen counter, pale fingertips skimming over the countertop.

If she [singular] walks purposely to the servant’s hall, past Margaret Grace’s shrine, she [singular] would find her buried son [4].

But if she saw him for certain, she could be compelled to tell.

And she has already lost two sons, and if she can have one back...

She [singular] possesses a long [infinite, impressive] memory, but if she doesn’t make sure of something, can she really say that she saw it?

She [singular] possesses a long [infinite, impressive] memory.

So what happens when she [singular] deletes something?

She [singular] possesses a long [infinite, impressive] memory.

[Warning! Deletion will cause degradation of memory coils. Continue?]

**[Selected: yes [x] no[_]]**

▁ ▂ ▃ ▄ ▅ ▆ █ 100 %

She [singular] had possessed a long [infinite, impressive] memory, but no longer.

Her creator asked her the events of yesterday, and she [singular] clearly recited what had happened, before glitching spectacularly [Error! Error! Irretrievable memory!]

As she [singular] sat there in the laboratory, wires threaded throughout, she [singular] realized the emotion she [singular] was feeling was none other than relief.

It was her last thought before she [singular] was rebooted.

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

_Please help me, come get me_

_Behind her, she can hear it say_

> **Dreaming of Storms (Part 1)  
>  **

Diego Hargreeves has the least problematic ability in the family, and that was saying something fierce because Diego could curve knives and redirect projectiles. He, like Five, like Klaus, like Ben, broke the laws of physics.

And now he was the only one left, and that was that.

Diego didn't like to dwell. It wouldn't bring any of them back, so save a few midnight tears and the crushing grief, Diego pretended he was okay. Or he disassociated until he thought being okay was being numb, but it was fine because Diego is a fucking survivor.

They all did what they can, and those who couldn't broke.

So Diego is doing fine.

He's been spending lots of time with Mom recently. It's not because he worries about her (though he does), it's because she's been gone for a few days, and Diego doesn't want to leave her alone.

He tells himself it's to ease the burden on her- robot or not, surely it must be a pain to clean up after all of them, good three meals, and just...deal with them. 

But maybe, when he's tired, he can admit that he's worried about her. Worried about her shutting down, falling apart, that one day she'll be unfixable and discarded-

Diego has seen so many of them being abandoned that the very idea of losing her made him...made him feel things.

Like rage. Yes, rage is good.

Rage is great because if you keep burning it you can't ever feel emotions like sadness or grief or bitterness and you can just hide the fact that you care about things.

"Are you angsting out again? Di, come on." He ignored the voice and continued to slowly scrape the food off plates.

"Oh, so it's one of those days, is it? Fine. I was going to tell you about my day..." 

Without looking up, Diego says, "I doubt your day was all that exciting, seeing as you are, I dunno, dead?"

He can almost hear him pout behind him, probably sitting on the countertop.

"Well, that's awfully rude, Di! Mom raised you better than to be impolite! What will our parents say?"

"I'm sure Pogo will be very disappointed when you tell him, which is...never. Because you aren't real." He places the plates in the cupboard with a bit more force than necessary.

"You're a real grumpy gut today, you know." Diego clomps out of the room, hearing light footsteps behind him. He keeps walking.

"Are you going to train? Di, that's so boring! Why can't we do a fashion show? I'll help! We can start by burning all those black clothes of yours."

"No thank you, brat." He's lucky the house is empty as it is, and that everyone here has a few screws loose. No one is going to look at him with Ben being a fucking sociopath in the other corner.

"How is it that you can be so polite with Mom and so mean to me?" The boy clicks his tongue in slight annoyance, curls bouncing up in agitation.

He flips him off and smiles softly at the indignant squawk.

➼

The night Klaus died was the night Diego realized that they weren’t ever going to be a real family.

Okay, look, that sounds stupid and mushy but honestly? Up till then, Diego secretly held onto hope that someday, someday, all six of them would escape and maybe find Five and run off with Mom and leave their terrible lives behind.

Only, he hadn’t realized that his siblings were terrifying and that perhaps he would do well in escaping them as well.

His tongue tasted bile at the memory of that night.

His family, Diego finally realized, was _monstrous._

It wasn’t their powers, not really. Sure, they each had the tremendous ability to be destructive, even Vanya, who was quiet but cunning. It was the way they were raised, to not care about casualties or who got hurt. It was the way they simply did not realize the effects of their actions.

It was because they prioritized the wrong things, and in the end, that led to their collapse.

It was simple, how the family was set up. 

Mother cared about everyone, and Pogo cared too, though they both had favorites, even if they weren’t supposed to. Mom sat with Diego the longest each night, even though he was almost eighteen now and technically didn’t need to be tucked into bed. Pogo loved Vanya, her quiet music and dry wit that popped up at the worst times, and a long time ago, Ben, who loved the library and was a quiet sort of happy.

Their father didn’t love any one of them, but Diego knew that he treated Five the best, and Luther pretty well too. Allison was just there, a blunt weapon of manipulation, so their father treated her decently.

Luther loved Allison, and Allison liked Luthor enough to spend almost all her time with him, though she also spent lots of time with Klaus, when she could tolerate him. Klaus liked her, maybe even loved her, but everyone knew he liked Ben best. And Ben loved him, so it worked out perfectly, and together, they dragged Diego with them and made him almost forget that he was just Number Two. Vanya trailed in at the end, sometimes dragged in by Klaus, gently encouraged by Ben, or just mocked by Five until she snapped at joined them all. This was a unique dynamic, and for the most part, it worked.

_But it wasn’t really a healthy one, was it?_

Because Five left, and Vanya receded into her shell so deeply that it took the combined effort of Ben, Klaus, and occasionally himself to get her to be okay again. Klaus’s well-meaning bluster and Ben’s ability to make everything _better_ , somehow, with Diego sometimes supplying snacks and holding her as she cried. Terrible, terrible times.

(Guys, he always knew his sister was small, but right then? Right then, he realized she was breakable. That they could all shatter just. Like. That.)

And things were getting better, he swears. Things were looking up, they were looking forward to getting out, getting away, but-

But he doesn’t really remember that day, doesn’t remember their father taking Klaus away for training.

He doesn’t really realize that Klaus is gone for three days, only that this place at the dinner table was empty, but Klaus was often missing, so he didn’t pay attention. He just thought Klaus was shooting up somewhere, and he’s ashamed to even remember it.

But Diego does remember Ben vividly destroying the dining room, and he remembers the cold night air when they buried Klaus.

Klaus was paler than Diego had ever seen before, almost as a pale as a ghost, and he can’t help but yell at him in desperation. Klaus isn’t supposed to die, Klaus is supposed to be making dirty jokes and smoking weed and stealing clothes from his closet. And it hurts knowing that a little more care, a little more attention would’ve saved Klaus.

And Diego admits he’s afraid of what happens next because he’s honest _(unlike Luther, who has the unfortunate luck to badmouth Klaus in passing in front of Ben.)_

Ben isn’t making things better anymore, and Ben isn’t Ben, so Diego avoids him and avoids Klaus’s room and just avoids. He sometimes falls asleep on the settee, next to Mom’s charging port, waking up to his father’s cane hitting his back sharply. He doesn’t care.

No one cares.

Ben’s eyes are more green and pink than not, and Vanya floats around as if she’s a ghost, and Luther tries to command a team that was never really his, while Allison pretends if she just focuses on running away, she can outrun their childhood, and Diego wants to laugh, because damn, Allison, haven’t you realized that you’ll never escape this?

His siblings might see the changes in himself, the fact that he’s stopped competing with Luther, because hey, who wants their Father’s attention? Look what Father did to Klaus. He keeps his mouth shut, avoids them all, and thinks about running away every day, but stays because the Police Academy, the only place where his skills might be useful, won’t take him if he’s underage, and he doesn’t even have a talent he can busk with while sleeping on the streets, so he spends more time at the Academy than not.

So Diego is perfectly fine, or so he says, and he pretends he’s entirely sane.

Except for the whole thing, you know, seeing _Klaus_ shit.

Everything _except_ that.

➼

“Miss me?” He looks up from where he’s sitting on the bathroom floor, crying, and his eyes widen.

A large smile, filled with teeth.

“Did ‘ya miss me, Di?’” Diego’s aware that he’s making some sort of choking noise.

“M-m-missed-d y-y-you.”

“Really? How much?” He clenches his fists, trying to ground himself, just imagine the words in your head, Diego-

“More than you’ll ever know.”

➼

“It’s bad for your back to sleep on the floor, y’ know.”

“I can’t sleep in my bed.”

“Well, what do you usually do when you can’t sleep?” Brown eyes look into grey ones, glaring.

“I used to sleep with _you and Ben._ ”

“…right.”

➼

“I’m pretty sure I’m hallucinating you.”

“Maybe. Did you get into my stash?”

“Your…stash?”

“Ugh, Di! My stash! With my drugs! _Mon Frere,_ you’re a bit of a dumbass.”

“Don’t call me dumbass, _dumbass!_ And no, why the fuck would I get into your stash?”

“I dunno! I mean, I’m dead and it’s just such a waste, y’ know?”

“I am not doing drugs just because you want me too.”

“Hey, I mean…might as well, y’ know? You’re already batshit crazy.”

“Hey! Stop throwing things at me Di!”

“That’s what you get, you piece of shit.”

➼

“Why don’t you talk to Ben anymore?” A look.

“Okay, okay, I get it…he’s a bit unhinged, but…” He bites his lip, and Deigo has to look away.

“He isn’t Ben anymore,” Diego says finally.

“I mean…he just….” Diego leans back, looking up at the ceiling, head pillowed on his arms.

“You may have died Klaus, but so did Ben. Don’t ask me to interact with the monster that wears my brother’s face.”

“I just…I just…” Diego looks up at him.

“I want you all to be okay.”

“Me too kiddo. Me too.”

➼

“Am I the only one you hang out with?” He asks as if Klaus isn’t a fucking hallucination.

“Of course Di! You’re my favorite, y’ know?” Diego smiled a small, bitter smile. That’s how he knew Klaus wasn’t real.

There was no world where Klaus chose _Diego_ over _Ben._

➼

“Are you seriously trying to bake a cake?”

“Hey asshole, don’t knock it.”

“…it doesn’t even look like a cake,” he says petulantly.

“Betcha wish you could taste this masterpiece.”

“Dream on, bitchass.”

“You sure…?”

_“Shut the fuck up.”_

➼

“She’s acting kind of _sus-pic-ious!_ ” His voice is high pitched and reedy, and Diego grimaces.

“So?”

“So? So! You should ask her what’s happening?”

“Yeah, not happening. I’m not getting involved with _Three_.” He whirls around, chrome eyes gleaming with anger.

“Her name is Allison!”

And Diego finds something inside him flush with shame.

➼

“He isn’t so bad, Di.”

“I’m sorry, did you miss the part where he insulted Vanya?”

“It’s not like you care about Vanya…” he mutters.

“Is that what you think?” He opens his mouth, but Diego shuts him down quickly. “Get the fuck out of my room, _right now.”_

He vanishes, and Diego punches the wall.

➼

“Hey…hey. Di. Look at me.”

“Come one. Please. How long are you going to ignore me?”

“Fine. Fine! You want an apology! Fuck you, _I’m sorry_.” His voice is exasperated, but there’s something desperate there. _“I’m sorry, okay?”_

“…kay.”

➼

_Just let me in, ooh _

_J ust let me in, ooh _

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took forever because Diego is a little bitch, and his part isn't even done, so FUCK YOU DIEGO HARGREEVES.
> 
> ...i'm hungry. It's Ramadan.
> 
> EDIT: got rid of that beginning part because it was bothering me. Idk. didn't like that so it's gone.


	3. where the black planets roll without aim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison's bones are hollow, so hollow that she has to fly or be crushed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hurt everyone, even more, and I actually introduce some plot. I also realize that it's stupid to squash everything into the last chapter.

_She went in the woods away_

_So afraid, all alone_

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

> **A Bird-like Countenance**

Allison has bird bones. Hollow, light, so thin and flimsy, bruisable. Klaus used to call her bird head, a mockery of her ditzier side, but also because she was just so unsubstantial. He was half a head shorter than her but stronger, so she let him spin her around.

In more silent, softer moments, Klaus used to call her birdie, a babyish thing, only for when shit hit the fan or when she was crying in his arms. Or as it usually was, both.

Birdie is all the soft parts of herself, all the smart parts of herself that Klaus took when he died.

Luther tried to call her that once, when they were in his room. Birdie, he said, but his voice was too deep and too rough and she’d run outside in disgust. Luther didn’t try again.

Bird. She is a feathery, fragile thing, and she’s good at running and she’s good at talking, but birds like her get their neck snapped when they let down their guard, so Allison tucks into herself and begins thinking.

Birds are pretty when they’re caged, but they aren’t meant to be locked up. And Allison has to break out soon, before she’s just another body buried in the dark.

Allison is not going to be buried here, Luther be damned.

﹝•••﹞

_“I heard a Rumour that you forgot about that night!”_

﹝•••﹞

_Come on sweetie, it’s just a bit of fun._

She shudders awake, nails clawing into her forearms, breathing heavy and erratic. It was just a dream, just a dream. Just a stupid little dream, with that stupid coarse voice. It shouldn’t affect her so much. It’s been two years, she’s sixteen, she’s fine.

Her sheets are wet with sweat, and the back of her shirt is positively drenched. She feels gross and sticky, so she clambers out of bed, opening her bedroom door before peeping outside. Not a soul was awake, so she crept into the restroom with a spare set of clothes.

The door won’t lock.

Sighing, she goes back into her bedroom, about to drag her desk chair out so she could prop it against the knob when she sees Vanya coming out of her bedroom, fists rubbing her eyes.

She could ask Vanya to sit outside, couldn’t she? But what if she just left in the middle? Allison hasn’t done anything mean to her as of late, but...

Sighing, she straightens her shoulders. She needs to ask at least.

“Vanya?” Dark brown eyes look up at her.

“Could you…I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to, but um…” Vanya, suddenly alert, looks around, as if putting together the pieces.

“Do you want me to sit outside?” Allison nods.

“The lock is broken, and I don’t…” She just doesn’t want any of the guys to walk in, even accidentally. Vanya agrees to it, so long as she can bring her violin.

In the end, Vanya ends up sitting inside, leaning on the bathroom floor, looking away from the tub. They’ve silently agreed to not turning the lights on, just sharing the same space in the moonlit sky.

Allison washes slowly as Vanya goes through a series of chords, all slow and soft as to not wake the rest of their floor’s inhabitants.

“Why were you up?” Allison asks finally, voice quiet. It seems like they’ve entered a weird twilight zone where Allison isn’t Three and Vanya is Seven, where Vanya could have the advantage if she tried.

“Couldn’t sleep with Ben’s snoring. You?” 

Allison forewent the immediate question of _you and Ben share a room?_ and instead replied with “A nightmare. Nothing big, don’t really know why it freaked me out.” Her voice is full of forced nonchalance, showy even though there’s no need for it.

“Hmm.” Comes the reply. Vanya’s face is shadowy in the dark, but Allison swears there’s a smile on her face. Allison huffs petulantly. Vanya could at least pretend to believe her.

Allison makes a motion to get out of the tub, and Vanya turns completely the other way as Allison slips into her bathrobe. She shuffles closer to Vanya, reaching out her hand to pull her up, but Vanya gently pulls her down, so Allison sits down next to her little sister. It’s a comfortable sort of silence, and Allison leans her wettish hair on the door, eyes closed and ready to drift off.

“Do you wonder if he’ll come back?” Her head jerks in Vanya’s direction.

“Who? Klaus?” Vanya shakes her head slightly.

“Five? Ben? Maybe Diego? I don’t know…” Allison’s head thunks on the heavy oak door.

“Technically, Ben and Diego haven’t left.”

“But they aren’t all…here? Are they?” Vanya’s tone is less questioning and more statement, like she’s professing a fact.

“I mean…Ben pretty much went off his rockers, but Diego is okay, right?” Vanya bites her lips, shaking her head slightly.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to anyone but Mom these days.” Allison sighed before turning to her sister. Vanya’s eyes were closed, cheek pressed against her violin.

“You…I don’t know how to say this Vanya, so please assume I’m saying this in a…in a… positive-ish way?” Vanya let out a little huff that might be a laugh.

“Go on. I promise not to stab you with my bow if I get offended.”

“I just…you don’t have to fix everyone.” Vanya’s shoulders tensed.

“Not that I think caring is bad! I really…I really appreciate it, and if the boys were…they’d appreciate it too. it’s just…we can’t really…all of us a bit...”

“Broken?” Vanya offers wryly, mouth turned up in a half-smile but eyes dark and wary. Allison nods.

“I just…for example, I don’t get how you let….Ben…I’m just...”

“I’m scared of him too,” she says casually.

“But-”

“But I’m scared of all of you to an extent, it’s just that Ben’s a bit worse off.” She shrugs. “It makes no difference. You’ve all learned to fight, and I have no training. Ben could stick a tentacle through my chest or throw me out a window, but you could rumour me to jump out just the same. If I start being scared of him, I’d begin to think about how the rest of you can hurt me.”

She’s already thought about this, Allison realises, and she’s already made her decision. Something warm blooms in Allison’s chest. She tilts her head slightly, pressing featherlight on Vanya’s.

“Your hair is still wet, isn’t it? I’ll help you dry it.” Vanya hands Allison her beloved violin and begins fluffing the towel up. Allison leaned forward with a smile.

“Thank you Vanya,” she says, eyes closed. Vanya stills momentarily before continuing to dry her hair.

They both understand what she’s saying anyway.

Vanya would like her locket, Allison thinks. It’s all she really has anyhow.

﹝•••﹞

There’s a certain level of acuity required to realize that you may have brainwashed yourself. 

_Why?_

_What did she do to herself?_

﹝•••﹞

It’s a quiet day, and Allison’s skin feels overheated and sticky, but she’s already showered twice today, so she just washes her hair and face seven times before patting herself dry.

The mansion is cold and dry, and she kicks off her shoes. Her bare feet on cold marble, she imagines freezing just like that.

 _Pretend it’s just a role._ She freezes up her body, pretending to be an ice statue. But being outside her room, out in the open made her antsy, sweat prickling on her back. She dropped it, shaking around relentlessly.

Her mouth tastes sour, like grime. She rushes to the restroom and brushes her teeth until her gums are raw. Her face is sticky now, with spit and paste, so she washes her face again. And again. And _againagainagainagain-_

Her arms hurt. _Why do they hurt?_ She’s on the bathroom floor, shored up against the cabinets.

 _Pretend it’s a role,_ she tells herself, wincing. _Get up before anyone finds you._

Someone is walking closer, and she can’t get up. Footsteps.

Luther’s blond head pops up. He makes an about turn as he sees her.

“Allison?” And she can’t help but nod. “Can I help you up?”

“Yes,” she croaks out. Luther’s brows furrow in concern, but he reaches a hand out and helps her up.

“Are you okay, Allison?” And she looks into his warm blue eyes and asks herself the same thing.

_It doesn’t matter._

“I’m fine.” Luther smiles, dimples showing.

“Want to play a game?” And Allison doesn’t really want to, but the alternative is hiding in her room, so-

“Of course.” She’s in a role, a role that says she’s okay right now. Allison Hargreeves is now blithely walking behind Luther, pretending she doesn’t know that he likes her, pretending that she really wants to play speed.

Allison plasters a smile on her face and wins.

And when she wins, she leans over and kisses him.

He tastes like strawberry jam.

﹝•••﹞

_“I heard a Rumour that you forgot about that night!”_

﹝•••﹞

 _Nicotine stained fingers cover her mouth, and she shudders._ She wakes up with a scream on her tongue, and she tumbles out of bed, limbs tangled.

_Fuck._

_Who are you going to tell?_

﹝•••﹞

She burns one of her plaid skirts. She can’t wear it anymore. Diego looks at her strangely, but then helps her move the skirts around with a poker so that it burns properly. Diego is good with a fire poker, and is good at keeping his mouth shut.

She’ll give Diego her silver knife, the one that she ‘liberated’ from that assassin. The one with dove imprint.

﹝•••﹞

She is choking from all the secrets inside herself. The secrets she can’t even remember, the secrets she knows will hurt.

_There was a padded room-_

_Is Vanya sick?_ She can’t remember.

She can’t remember, just like she can’t remember that accursed night.

Did she do this to herself? Did she _ruin_ her sister? 

_Did she destroy herself?_ Allison is not a kind person. Allison is a terrible person. Allison is a terribly uncompassionate person who ruins everything she touches.

Somehow, does it make it better if she’s terrible to herself as well? Allison can’t afford to be kind to herself. She doesn’t deserve it.

﹝•••﹞

Allison is a house of mirrors, distorted until she doesn’t understand where she stands if that’s _really_ her. 

She’s a faceless monster, nothing but an abstract voice, weak to the universe’s demands.

﹝•••﹞

Their father writes in a journal after every exercise. The measurements, her range of power, how to disable her, that kind of thing. And it would slip past as normal to her, except for one little detail.

There are seven books.

And it’s certainly reasonable that her father started and abandoned Vanya’s journal, except-

How do you completely rule out powers? 

She could say that her Luther’s power was evident, and to a certain extent, so was Diego’s, but...how did he know for sure that Klaus’s ability wasn’t just early onset schizophrenia?

How did he know the one key phrase that triggers her powers?

And how can he be sure that Vanya doesn’t have powers at all? 

﹝•••﹞

She wants to chop off her hair, but actresses are given better chances if they have long hair, and she has enough things working against her as it is.

She sometimes wished her skin was paler. Things sometimes seemed easier for fair-skinned people.

Of course, being white didn’t save Vanya or Klaus, or even Five. Conversely, being white did give their father power though, the same power all cisgender white men held. Power over his household, power over the masses.

Power over his children. It gave him the power to break them all. Allison was a china doll, porcelain pretty and fragile. She wouldn’t be forever though.

She imagined taking off a porcelain mask. What would she see?

Would she see blood? How about grime? How about tears dripping down her chest and down her thighs and sticking together with her skin-

It was dark that night. It was dark and she’d been trying to run away. She was going to run away, without any preparation because she was a weapon, she’s still a weapon, she can alter reality, she can handle the authorities, she can deal with the cops, she can deal with Hollywood producers.

She was fourteen and her hair was long. This is before she realises she has to tuck it away. She was fourteen and the world outside seems a lot nicer than the atmosphere inside the Academy. Bad things happen, obviously, but she’s Allison Hargreeves, the Rumour! A real-life superhero, there’s nothing she can’t handle.

She doesn’t know how it happens.

It’s blurry and faded and it hurts because her head can barely recall what happened.

There’s a voice, someone touching her legs and her chest, tugging her hair-

Nicotine stained fingers cover her mouth, and she shudders.

"Come on sweetie, it’s just a bit of fun,” he says. She is frozen. "Who are you going to tell?"

She’s been trained. She can shoot men, shank men, she knows how to incapacitate, she’s a killer.

But right then, she is a fourteen-year-old.

Her mouth is covered and there are fingers pulling down her panties. He smells bad, he smells like grime and dirt and rust, and Allison is small and tired and scared.

Allison is small and tired and terrified but she is not going to be buried.

She imagined Klaus clawing up at the dirt. She’s so close to the brick alley wall, her assaulter holding her.

She has to move, has to move, she has to-

Her teeth and tongue taste like grime.

There’s suddenly blood in her mouth, the man screaming profanity at her, and Allison Hargreeves screams. The first scream is in terror, and the second is terrified anger, and the third scream-

_“I heard a Rumour you got hit by a car!”_

Her knees buckle like used tissue paper as the man, screaming in fear, is thrust by forces invisible towards the busy road, and she watches-

Eagerly-

as he’s hit by an eighteen-wheeler

and his body is blood-streaked and crumpled and _broken-_

And she laughs.

And she keeps laughing even though she’s crying.

_Who is she going to tell, after all?_

﹝•••﹞

She wakes up and she has to wash her face, her hands, her legs right now. She rushes to the bathroom, off-kilter, but the door is locked and she curses, turning back and retreating to her room, jamming the door shut as she collapses on the floor.

_Come on sweetie, it’s just a bit of fun._

She shudders, biting her tongue hard enough to draw blood. She grabs a napkin and spits out the blood, eyes watering in pain as she checks for damage. It’s not so bad, not horrific enough to get Mom, so she stays on the floor, shuddering and twitching.

She has to wash herself right now, right now, right now. She tries to break out of the compulsion, tugging on her hair sharply, and the pain brings her out just for a moment, just enough for her to open the door and rush out, rush into someplace where she wouldn’t be by herself, in her room.

That place turns out to be Klaus’s old room, and she holds back a miserable cry as she realises how fucking empty it is. Their bastard of a father has cleaned it up, but Allison falls to her knees on the worn rug and sprawls forward, reaching into the closet for something, anything. She finds an old leather skirt of hers wedged up in the corner.

Jackpot.

She sits down, on the bedroom floor, clutching the leather skirt. She presses her face into it, trying to see if it smells like Klaus.

It smells like dust and worn leather, and she has to pull away to take a breath. Sticky tears stain her cheeks, dripping onto the leather.

She’s crying, she realises. Her mouth tastes like rust, but her eyes are actually crying, for real and not from injury.

She wasn’t aware she could do that anymore.

She crumples the skirt as her fingers cut into the soft leather, holding it closer, pressing it to her chest.

Oh, Klaus.

Oh poor, poor Klaus.

Oh lucky, stupidly fortunate Klaus.

It smells like dust and ash and leather and sweat and a little bit of Klaus and she wonders, years after, how he got the drugs, what he gave up for them, and she swallows down her bile.

_Klaus, baby, how did you get that cocaine?_

_What did you have to do, Klaus?_

Footsteps in the hallway. She freezes imperceptibly, pressing her face closer into the skirt.

_Damndamndamndamndamndamn-_

If she ignores whomever it is, maybe they’ll move on. Allison can’t help but stiffen- her back is towards the door, she’s hunched over, the only exit points are the barred window and the doorway, and the walls aren’t drywall so she can’t crash through, but she really doesn’t want anyone to see her like this-

“Allison.” His voice sounds smokey, rough and soft at once. She turns around, and Ben is leaning against the doorway, one hand in his hair, holding a towel. He’d look like the picture of casual circumstance, with his loose flannel pajamas and white fitted shirt, had his eyes not been closed.

“Ben,” she says, voice shaky from crying. His nose gives a slight twitch, but his eyes remain closed.

“Do you require Mother’s attention?” He phrases it so formally that she has to pause for a millisecond to process what the fuck he’s saying.

“Uh..um, no. Thank you, but I’m…fine.” She looks away from him (every extinct in her screams at her not to, that he’s a predator, but-) and back into the skirt. She doesn’t press into it again, but she does hold it.

She sighs.

Ben makes a small, surprised noise. She looks up at him in confusion.

“You miss him.” It’s a statement, but there’s a subtle undercurrent of confusion and wonderment there.

“Of course I do.” His shoulders aren’t tense anymore, and he looks smaller, younger.

“You spend time with Luther.” And yeah, she sees how that might affect the grieving process a little, but Allison isn’t Luther’s bitch, nor does she tolerate Luther’s more acrimonious thoughts.

“I’m not him.” And ain’t that the truth. Some of Allison’s problems stem purely from the fact that she can’t be anyone else.

Just like Klaus.

“So you aren’t,” he says, the edges of his eyes tilting up in a facsimile of a smile. An eye smile.

Allison huffs softly before slumping down a little, relaxing.

“I wish I could see him,” she says thoughtlessly, mind elsewhere.

“You don’t ever visit his grave.” It’s a statement, unaccusing, but she bristles.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“Never said you didn’t, did I?”

“You were thinking it. I could tell.” At that, the air shifts slightly to the left, and Ben opens his eyes.

“Don’t presume to understand what I’m thinking.” Allison ignores her instinctive swallow, the way her hindbrain is telling her to run. Ben is suddenly too close, face a few centimeters from her’s. She doesn’t flinch.

(She’s seen the stuff that comes out of people’s heads, brain matter. Nothing can really terrify her anymore.)

Ben’s under the impression that he’s the biggest, baddest thing to walk around here, with his ability to kill everything in sight without hesitation, but Allison knows ( _sweetie_ ) that there are things worse than death itself.

“Am I a monster, Allison?” Ben’s eyes gyrate with a sticky sort of green and black. His voice is layered, the monster closer to the surface. Her mouth does a thing.

She looks up at him, smiling bitterly. “No more than the rest of us.” And surprisingly, that is the right thing to say, because Ben sits down next to her.

﹝•••﹞

Once upon a time ago, she really did consider telling her father.

But even imagining how that conversation would go was enough to make her run to the restroom and throw up the lumpy oatmeal she’d had for breakfast.

_Hello Father, I was trying to run away and some fucker decided I was the ideal choice to stick his dick inside! But don’t worry, he’s dead now, because I made him kill himself. The Umbrella Academy’s Reputation isn't damaged at all!_

Not really ideal, is it? 

[She pretends she hasn’t vividly imagined his reaction, anger, or _worse_ , disappointment.

“Number Three, how could you let yourself be used like that?”

“I-”

“You could not even fight a drunkard! What use are you?”

“I tried, I didn’t mean-”

“It was your fault-”

The nightmare ends there because Allison has to change her sheets now.]

﹝•••﹞

Diego is quiet as a mouse when Allison creeps into the kitchen. She isn’t paying attention (except for his position, his place, for footsteps, exit ways, entry points-) until he puts a cup of warm milk in front of her.

“Drink up.” And so she begins sipping it. The milk is awfully good.

Diego doesn’t sit next to her, but there’s something peaceful about him in the kitchen. His shoulders aren’t tense, and he only has one knife.

Allison is going to miss Diego. She might have to tell him that she loves him before she leaves.

The calmness of the room evaporates the minute Ben enters.

He sits at a seat across from her, eyes closed. Diego’s shoulder blades could cut steel.

A few minutes of silence.

“What, no milk for me?” Ben’s voice is casual, but Diego looks like he wants to throw something at Ben. He acquiesces though, and Ben gets a cup of milk too. Ben says thank you, teeth showing, and Diego glares at him before turning away.

Allison hides a smile. Ben can’t help but antagonize Diego, and Diego remained internally evasive as ever.

Diego is jealous of Ben, and Ben is jealous of Diego. Their jealousy is just a cover for how deeply they care, how deeply they grieve Klaus.

It’s almost romantic in the sense- Ben won’t let anyone so much as touch Diego, and Diego, as scared as he is of Ben, hides it under anger.

They’re idiots. Allison’s idiots.

Knife for Diego, and secrets for Ben. Both can hurt her, but only one will. She’ll have to run when he isn’t watching.

﹝•••﹞

_“I heard a Rumour that you forgot about that night!”_

﹝•••﹞

Bird bones stretch her skin, and Allison feels the wind turn as summer fades. Her window for escape closes in, and Allison feels brittle. She distracts herself with lists in her head, sleepless nights waxing and waning.

 _Allison, you brilliant thing._ Klaus’s voice winds through her ribs and between her skull.

She doesn’t visit his grave. Unlike Vanya, she’s never needed the gravestone to hear Klaus. Klaus, in a sense, has never left. He’s the space between her bones and the brevity in her breath, the bravado that pops up at the worst times.

She’s scared to leave, but she’s petrified at staying. She isn’t leaving them behind, she promises. She has to leave, she has to leave before she’s buried too. She has to leave before their father kills her dreams like he killed Klaus.

Memories for Klaus she thinks. She’s going to paint the world brilliantly, and every role she takes will be for her brother. She is going to wear Klaus’s face, beam with his smile so she can be better than herself. Allison is damaged, but Klaus is pure.

This has been coming for a long time. Her duffel bag carries a hundred dollars in dollar bills and fives, a gun, and her clothes. Nostalgia begs her to take something sentimental, so she carves open Five’s painting, just his face, and steals a poster from Klaus’s room with their faces. Five smirks at her, eyes frigid, and she glares back.

Klaus’s skirt has been resewn into a shawl. It hides the gun. A little bit of Klaus for the long road.

There’s a box under her bed, red wrapping paper with all her words and whatever's left of her love. She already gave Luther his gift, the last she’d give of herself for years.

She’s dressed in black, loose clothing, hair braided up. Her skin is sallow without sleep, and she can be free, so long as she steps out now. She’s a wraith in the shadows, a bird of prey, talons sharp and eyes clear.

Is it not her turn to have a bit of _fun_? She bites her lip viciously, drawing blood. 

She’s never been kind to herself, has she? Have any of them truly been kind to each other? 

She’s the cruelest of them all, isn’t she?

She’s leaving them, she has to leave, she has to forget or she’s going to spend the rest of her life washing herself until she’s raw and red and her outsides reflect her insides, gross and bleeding.

She is a faceless monster, a voice for the void, requiring payment in the form of abuse. She hurts people. She has the power to destroy people. She is the real monster, isn’t she? 

And monsters deserve to be hunted, but Allison wants to live so badly. She wants to suck the marrow out of life and she doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t really, but she _wantswantswantwants-_

So badly! She wants and it hurts.

Her tennis shoes are old and comfortable, squishing as she settles herself through the window. Every step until she gets out, one more step and she’s free, once and for all.

She’s halfway through when she hears a choked noise behind her. 

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

_They warned her, don't go there_

_There are creatures who are hiding in the dark_

> **Dreaming of Storms (Part 2)  
>  **

Diego had years to get used to Klaus being everywhere, to an uncomfortable degree. It’s almost mortifying how many times Klaus has popped up when he was showering, or doing...other personal things.

The upside is that Diego has no gauge for privacy. He’s also steadily lost any sense of personal dignity he had. _Nice._

Klaus was everywhere, and sometimes Diego even wanted him to be there.

That being said, the only place Klaus doesn’t show up is the tank, which is actually great.

Diego thinks it's because his body is already maxed out from trying not to have a panic attack in an environment where he can’t breathe. Which is good, because panic attacks are bad and Diego likes to cling to his last bit of sanity. His mind just doesn’t have enough to juice to mass hallucinate his dead little brother and keep him alive.

So it’s just Diego.

But he doesn’t really want to be alone in the tank. The room is dark as it is, and it’s after midnight, and every second is a fight against falling asleep and drowning.

His abilities only work when he’s conscious, a little fact his father learned when he tossed little Diego in a 15-foot tank after Luther knocked him out in a fight.

He’s almost glad that he was mostly dead for that particular experience.

And look, he knows that after numerous experiences, after being submerged in everything from nitrogen to what he thinks was acid, he should really have trauma associated with water, and he obviously does, but it’s honestly not so bad. A five out of ten, wouldn’t recommend, but on a list of every shitty thing, every fucking crime Sir. Reginald Hargeeves has committed in his unfortunate ass life, this doesn’t even rank.

Like, he’s not even afraid of water, not really. He’s just mildly terrified. 

His fingernails pierced the soft skin of his upper arm. His eyes are closed, and he can almost imagine the sound of his hair swishing around in the tank around him.

He wonders if he looks like a mermaid. Or if he’s stagnant as a dead body. He can hold his breath infinitely, but what if he just...lets go?

He tries to think of his mother’s eyes, the sound of Vanya’s music, of Klaus’s overdramatics.

It’s hard to think of love in subarctic waters. It’s hard to imagine your sister in your arms or your brother letting you watch him write formulas on the walls. It’s difficult to imagine a beyond, that there’s something after he left the tank.

He’s not scared of water, really. Water is water. What he’s scared of is drowning.

It’s a bit difficult to explain, but he can’t hate water, even if he tries. And he has tried, he’s tried to be angry at water instead of at his father, because being angry at his father is like being angry at a hurricane, or at a wildfire. It doesn’t care, you’re only hurting yourself, and you have to save yourself. Water is just a weapon his father wields against him.

He doesn’t like his superhero name, the Kraken. He figured that it would better fit Ben, who had Lovecraftian tentacles in his midsection, but there’s nothing he can do but complain internally. He could’ve been the Sharpshooter, or the Archer, or something else amazing.

But part of him likes the water so deeply, part of him understands that his Father is trying to trigger some sort of super skill from him that accompanies the ability to hold his breath underwater. And he’s sure, with sufficient motivation and practice, Diego could become whatever his father wanted. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? His father invested so much money on them, that he wants to see some sort of product, some sort of extra outcome. And Diego isn’t going to give it to him. 

He’s never been to the beach, but he wonders what would happen. 

He’d probably get into the water and disappear forevermore. 

➼

His father eventually comes for him, and he shivers back to his bedroom. He ought to shower, he really should, but the idea of hobbling to the restroom exhausts him, so he manages to get into his room.

There’s this ghastly feeling of exiting the tank, this suction of doom that tries to hold onto him even as he climbs up the ladder to the now open hatch. It’s this sucking sensation that threatens to unbalance him, so he tries not to think about it too much.

His skin never prunes up, but he has this urge to strip out of his swimwear and rub his entire skin dry. The other urge is to flop under his blankets and wrap himself up until he can’t feel the cold anymore.

After the tank always brings up existential questions, like _what is he doing here?_ and does anyone _give a shit?_ He doesn’t even know why he asks himself that, he doesn’t want anyone to know, doesn’t want their pity, doesn’t want anything from anyone. He wanted things before, wanted attention, and wanted love and now he’s seeing shit and he’s dreaming about water so the moral of the story is to just hunker down and wait for the storm to pass on by.

Klaus doesn’t show up, and he’s too tired to worry.

He does eventually lay on the floor, skin still sticking to wet nylon, but he can’t really force himself to do anything. The chlorine stings a little, but he can’t make himself get up.

At least, not until he hears footsteps in the hallway. 

It’s three in the morning.

Who’s awake at this hour?

Klaus is leaning against the wall, eyes alert. 

  
“What are you waiting for, Di? It might be an intruder!” He barely manages a nod before craning his neck towards the door. He can barely feel his arms.

He waits until he hears the footsteps pass, before slowly getting up. He’s barefoot, but he grabs his towel and wraps it around himself before cracking open the door and following. Klaus is already in the hallway, 

He can’t check room by room, not if he doesn’t want to be eviscerated, so he catalogs what he knows from the footsteps he can hear.

The person has light footsteps, which actually doesn’t mean a lot, considering they’ve all had training, but that crossed Vanya out, and made it less likely to be Luther. 

He makes a face. Of course, it wasn’t Luther- the stick up his ass probably prevented him from ever breaking any one of father’s rules.

  
  


So that left Ben and Allison. 

If it is Ben, Diego doesn’t want to interfere. If its’ Allison...well, he still doesn’t really want her to see him.

It’s a winding path of hallways, he realises, leading to the hall near the rusty fire escape, the path with the least cameras. His heart rate picks up, and he feels a little queasy, even if he doesn’t understand _why_.

“Why are you making that face, Di? What’s wrong?” Klaus sounds worried

A shadow, of a lithe figure. He creeps out carefully, stepping silently.

It’s Allison, wearing all black.

“What the fuck! What the absolute fuck!” Klaus’s jaw is hanging on the floor, eyes the size of dinner plates. 

_What the fuck indeed._

Diego can only see her back, but the duffel bag on her arm is proof enough.

“She’s running away? That’s...that’s crazy, how is she…? Di? What are you…”

His mouth opens to call her, but all that comes out is a choking sound.

She whips around, eyes wild and not a little crazy.

“Ahh! Crazy eyes!” Klaus yelps, skedaddling backwards.

“Diego?” she hisses, dropping her duffel bag.

“W-w-what? A-a-are you, you doin-” She hisses at him to be quiet, and he stops talking, indignantly.

“Diego, imagine the word-” Klaus is interrupted.

“Shut up! You’re going to draw them all here.” She rubs her face as if she’s tired, and Diego can barely make out the dark circles under her eyes.

Klaus stands next to Allison, rifling through her bag. Whatever he sees comforts her, and he gives Diego a thumbs up.

God, between trying to keep his eyes on Allison and off Klaus, his head is pounding.

“I’m leaving, Diego. Please don’t make me stay!” Her voice takes on an almost hysterical tone, and Diego tries to make sense of the situation. He has a thousand questions, but-

“Where are you going to go?” And she smiles a manic little smile, nothing like her small, demure photogenic newspaper smile.

“That’s such a creepy smile, Alli. Is she high…?”

“Hollywood, or wherever else I want!” She gives a little twirl, and Diego is tempted to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

Klaus does jazz hands, and then he does pinch himself.

Allison moves forward, and Klaus dances on the fire escape. Diego feels a little trapped.

She tilts forward and looks at him, eyes dark. 

“You’re not going to tell, are you? I’d hate to make you…” And Diego has to nod, panicked.

He does not want to be rumoured.

“Damn Allison be hardcore!” _Please shut the fuck up._

“I-I won’t tell.” _Please stop scaring me._

She nods, and gets up, eyes gleaming. She looks odd, and Diego’s heart drops when he realises why.

_She looks hopeful. Happy._

And then Diego _knows_ for sure that he can’t tell anyone, can’t let anyone know how or when she left. She needs a head start, and Diego can’t bear to see her brought back here in chains.

“Awww, look at you, having feelings!”

She’s out the window, solidly on the fire escape when she turns around. Diego is watching her, anxious, dark eyes large. She reaches inward, leaning forward.

“Hey. Under my bed, in the red box, okay?” Diego blanches before realization strikes, and he nods. He hesitates before moving close and wrapping his arms around her. She stiffens momentarily before relaxing, and she presses a soft kiss on top of his head, inhaling the scent of chlorine.

“Group hugs!” And then Diego is far too close to Klaus’s nostrils.

Allison pulls back and flicks his forehead. He hisses and moves back a step, while Klaus tries to jump on his back.

“I…I don’t know when I’ll be able to talk again. Obviously. But I don’t want you to worry, because I’ll be fine, but-” Diego bites his lower lip before pulling out a cheap pen.

Allison pulls out one of Mom’s old handkerchiefs. He scowls at her briefly before setting the fabric flat on the wooden floor, dislodging Klaus.With some effort, he writes something down, glaring at the stubborn cloth the entire time. He hands it to her.

In his classic neat blueprint, Diego’s written down his email.

“S-so y-you can stay in t-touch.”Allison smiles, eyes wet. Diego leaves the _So I don’t worry about you being murdered._

“You’re such a softie.” Klaus sniffs, looking at his fingernails.

“Well. I’ll email you as soon as I can, and you can make sure I’m safe.” She turns to leave.

Diego bites his lip, fingernails cutting into his palms.

“Allison, please be safe.” She turns back with a smirk, nodding. Her feet touch the floor and she’s off.

And Allison darts outside, the fire escape creaking as she makes her way down. Diego watches her until she disappears behind a building.

He waits to see if she’ll come back.

He knows she won’t.

“Are you just going to let her go?” Klaus’s voice is distrustful, his face hard. He looks worried.

Diego nods, and Klaus’s face brightens.

“Come on, time to get you back to your room, you big lug!” Klaus begins singing dirty sailor shanties to keep him awake, and somehow he makes it back to his room, barely holding in a sob when he collapses onto the floor. 

“Don’t cry, don’t you know what this means?” And Klaus leans over him, face elated.

And despite it all, he smiles back, eyes welling up with tears. He giggles softly, deliriously.

_At least one of us is finally free!_

And he falls asleep on the floor, curled up in a ball, Klaus keeping watch.

➼

He wakes up to yelling, and before he can get up, his door is pulled off the hinges.

It’s Luther, irate and unhinged, finger in his face.

“You! Where is she!” And for a split second, Diego is confused. Where’s who?

And then he remembers and wonders if Luther’s going to punch him until he’s a particularly gruesome stain on the wall. 

And Luther is yelling at him, pleading with him, threatening him, but Diego can’t hear anything past the rushing wind in his ears, the glee rising within.

She’s gone. Allison is gone, and Allison is safe. And based on the fact that their father hasn’t even ordered them to chase after her, hasn’t given any orders to find her-

It meant he could run, too.

He’s smiling, or something. His face is doing a thing, he can’t tell.

  
  
  


Luther sinks his fist in his face, and that snaps him back to the present. His eye is swelling, probably.

“-you made her! Tell me, you piece of shit, where is she! What did you do to her, where is she? I’ll kill you-” Diego can barely hear his heartbeat in between Luther’s raving, can barely hear Klaus’s angry ranting-

Vanya’s screaming, probably at Luther to stop him from murdering him, but Diego is so tired. He’s slept for less than two hours, he’s still in his swim clothes, he can’t deal with this right after the tank, can’t even begin to pull together the amount of coordination necessary to get Luther to back off.

So. This is how he dies, huh?

He wants to say it’s been a good run, but it really hasn’t.

“Come on, fight you bastard!” Klaus’s voice is pitchy but Luther just drop kicked him, before stomping on his chest. The cracking noise is from his ribs, right?

His insides feel squishy.

Luther’s knuckles tighten against his neck, blue eyes frigid and wild. Diego’s...everything hurts, and he doesn’t even have any knives on him.

His mouth is sticky with blood, and he closes his eyes. 

This is the end of _the Kraken._

It's less of a relief than he expects. Part of him apparently wanted to live, after all.

Luther is suddenly torn away from him, crashing into the adjacent wall. Diego crumples to the ground, half-conscious. Luther makes a movement to get up, but someone’s standing in front of him, teeth bared.

**“Try me, I fucking dare you!”** The Horror’s swirl around, pressing Luther further and further into the walls.

**“Vanya, get Mom!”** And Vanya basically bolts out the room, yelling.

Diego is tired. Klaus is next to him, crying.

“Please, Di, please-”

**“Hey. Hey Diego, I need you to look at me.”** Ben’s face is blurry, out of focus. Diego opens his mouth to draw in a deep breath, but he suddenly feels something in his sternum shift and he coughs, blood dribbling out of his mouth.

He has to tell Ben. He murmurs it.

**“What?”**

He says it again, trailing off. Diego feels drained. His mouth tastes like blood and sour air.

**“No, stay awake! Fuck!”** He feels a sharp pain, and he opens his eyes, but even that isn’t enough.

_He feels detached like he's floating around in a pool of water on his back._

_A headless doll in a tub full of water._

Like he's in the tank, and he can hear the water _humming around him._

Diego closes his eyes, and that’s the end of it.

_The world is fire and storms, and Diego is water, charred. He can hear waves lapping at the shore._

《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》《•》

_ Then she ran faster and _

_ Started screaming, is there someone out there? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to write the entire conclusion.
> 
> But then. I realised.
> 
> I haven't really mentioned where tf Klaus was, and I deleted the bit where he sneaked around the house, so- 
> 
> fuck. im dying.
> 
> SO I INTRODUCE plot, i think. Alli just skeet skeeted like that.
> 
> Im sorry im tried.
> 
> poor diego. he might be ded.
> 
> (i dont like alli/luther because its gross but it's cannon and I just- allison don't love him but it part of the plot im sorry-)
> 
> EDIT: for any of you cupcakes who wonder why Luther attacked Diego in particular...(like why didn’t just attack all of them) he basically saw Allison be kinda close to Diego (not really but just comfortable) and he was jelly? So when he left he was just angry and yeah Luther always thinks violence is the answer (just look at cannon)


	4. thus the living, lone and sobbing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you: wtf do you keep changing the format  
> me: because im TIRED OKAY
> 
> ...this is fucking trippy ngl.
> 
> ik yall are like, "bitch, where tf have you been?" 
> 
> final month of school my dudes. and that means.....well. AP exams, finals, last minute shit, Eid, my birthday (on the same day lol), wrapping up my therapy, etc. So i've been a bit busy, but im back? hopefully the last chapter of this fucking monster will be faster.

> ##  those little slices of death
> 
> _ Lily was a little girl _
> 
> _ Afraid of the big, wide world _

#####  allison

Her lips are cold, her eyes are dark. She whispers words that stop his heart. Pressing close and holding herself, she opens her mouth and commands him to choose her.

“ _I heard a rumour_ ,” she begins, the ice queen of infamy, “that you selected  _ Allison Hargeeves _ for this role.” All upper logical function leaves his head, and she moves away, and he blinks. The last few seconds are a hazy blur, and he goes on with the auditions.

There are quite a few good actresses, and he even tries to select a few, but when the time comes, all he says, to his fellow judges’ concern, is “Allison Hargeeves.” Dark eyes dance with malicious amusement, and he feels a terrible sense of foreboding.

He’s made a terrible mistake.

— 𖥸 —

#####  ben

He smells like chlorine and gauze, dark skin pale against the white sheets in the infirmary. 

If Ben was more literary, he’d say that Diego looks asleep, but honestly? Diego looked dead, and Ben doesn’t like it.

** Ẁ͛͋҉͓̯̩͔̯͎͚̰͉͠ẻ͍̤̻̣̼ͧͨͭͩ͞ ͮͮͧͨͭ̏̊ͯ͏̤̹̗̰̪̱͖̭c̸̞̮ͥ̽ͨ̂͝o̢̢̩͉ͧͩͦ̃̊̓ͫ͡u̪̟̹̦̩̯ͨ̉ͯ̑̇͑̅ͩ̽l̼̫̩̅ͤ̑̒͋̂̑̌͡d̷̪͚̥͈̗͆̐̓̄ͩ̉͂͑͜ṋ̷̡̺ͯ̿̄ͤ̓ͯ͐'̶̨̟̟͕̬̥̜̺̎̈́ͫͅt̛̩͉̤̙̗͔ͫ̇́̿̀͢ ͖͙̯̃̋ͤ̎̓ͤͅp̗̜̹̚r̷͕̮̩̝͓̂͊ͨ͋ō̡̼̕ṭ̡̫̩̫͇̹͊ͧ̔ͥ͝e̪̹͛̔ͪ̃̈́c̛͓̹̯̜̟̩̰̟ͮ̋͊ͤ͛̿͆ͫẗ͔̣͖͈̼̗̤̫̫́̂͛ ̨̭̗̦̮͉̟̅̑̎͊̀͞ḥ̷̇́͊͗̔͞͠į̝̫̬̬̝͕̣̐̂̈̈́ͯ̄͞͝m̉͏̼̥͖̹̼̭̗̮.̵̩͈̲̮͈̫̟͌̀̒̋͋ͨ͋̕ ̡̛͉͈̞̘͋̑͆ͬ̿̽ͬJ̦̺̖͌ͣ̈́̈ṵ̡̻̤ͬ͋̐͞s̢ͨ̍͛͊҉͙̞̦̱̘͎ẗ͉̫̰́̍̑͐̃ ̴͕̠͐ͯ̋̆̆́͟l̫͇̦̻͕̏̏͌ͫ͌͡͠į͈̮̤͕͎̏̾ͮ͒͜k̞͖͔͖̬͐͌͒̋e͕͓͌̉ͪ̈́ͪͨͧ́ ̭̗̳̻͐ͧ̎ͥ̍͑͜͠ͅͅK̡͉̇͊ͫ̎͝͞l̶͍͎̥͚͐̓̈̄ͅa̵̙̔̈́ͤu̱͈̍ͪͪ̾̓̆̎͢͜s̸͇̣̘͔͚͇̘̭͗̆̋̒̌ͭ̓̏̀͢-̨̢̩̞͎̭̲̌͗̈́͌̾ͦ **

_** We couldn’t protect him. Just like Klaus- ** _

“Shut up!” He hisses, and the voices retreat. He squeezes Diego’s calloused hands, worrying his lip as he stares at his comatose brother.

Luther had done quite a bit of damage, fucking up Diego’s insides. His cheeks were mottled green and purple, and his body was bandaged all over. There was gauze on his forehead, on his arms, his chest, on his-

Ben breathed in sharply through his nose. What’s done was done, and Klaus said that Diego wouldn’t appreciate murder on his behalf, to which Ben had snorted loudly. Diego would love murder, thank you very much. 

Vanya had been using the bed next to Diego’s for a few says The first night, she’d been crying so hard that she’d managed to get dehydrated, to the point where she’d been feverish. Mother had laid a sandwich next to her, to be eaten when she woke up. There was also a pitcher of overly sweet lemonade that had Ben gagging.

_ He fucking hates lemonade. _

But it’s been a few days, and Vanya seems colder now. Less vulnerable, more hidden. She’s tired, Ben thinks, tired of losing people she loves, so she’s retreating.

She’s retreating pretty far actually. Vanya is moving out.

Vanya has been marching to their father day in and day out, repeatedly, and her smile is vicious. She’s leaving, she says, and their father is bankrolling it. She says this, eyes dark with guilt and joy, and she leaves the house to go shopping. When she comes back, she has two basic phones, and she inserts a number into one of them and dials.

Now they can call each other, or SMS each other. Vanya is elated, and she hugs him (and mother), pressing a kiss to Diego’s forehead, promising to come back soon. Her purple suitcase is barely visible from the window, and Ben swallows down the urge to run off with her.

“We can’t leave, not yet.” Klaus, half corporeal, half wisp, dangles from the ceiling, legs hooked on lighting. His eyes are so grey that they’re almost white in the fading light, and Ben nearly yells at him to shut up. 

But he doesn’t, because Klaus is taking this whole debacle harder than he is. Klaus, who’s been haunting Diego (and wasn’t that a fun little reveal?) only to witness Allison emotionally manipulate him into letting her leave and then getting beaten up by her crazed ex. Klaus can’t cry, but he might as well be, the way his face switches between mania and not. 

“Red box,” he says, suddenly. He turns to Klaus. “What did Diego mean by red box?” Recognition flares up in Klaus’s eyes, and he drops to the ground.

“Under Allison’s bed! She has letters and stuff, for all of us.” Klaus devolves into excited gibberish, but Ben tunes it out, pressing his thumb to Diego’s steady pulse. He looks up at Klaus.

“Bring it here?” He asks, voice low with exhaustion. Klaus stops rambling and nods. 

“Of course, _mon frere_. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” Ben snorts loudly as Klaus zips through the walls. 

It’s just him and Diego now, and the silence is so fucking loud.

Ben has spent years chasing after Klaus’s love and attention, years begging for Klaus to come back, but in getting Klaus back, he realises that he’s neglected the rest of his siblings. That he’s pushed them away for no reason but his own grief.

But what if Diego dies? 

_Oh please don’t let him die._

_ I can’t bury another sibling. _

His mouth tastes like ash and bitter phlegm, and he coughs. He hates this, hates waiting like his, hates stewing in his own guilt because this is his fault, his fault for not taking care of Diego. He let him fall apart on the sidelines and now he’s nearly dead and  _ what if he doesn’t wake up? _

“Diego?” Klaus’s voice is soft, hesitant. He’s carrying a cheap cardboard box, taped up with red construction paper. 

“I’m fine,” he says, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands. Klaus gives him a look, to show exactly how much he doesn’t believe him, but Ben ignores him and reaches for the box. Klaus hip checks his hand before setting the box on Diego’s bed, next to his legs.

“Before you ask, I haven’t looked inside.” Ben snorts softly before prying off the duct tape, lifting up the shoebox’s lid. Inside, there are a host of letters, nine actually, with some objects. One is a knife with a tag. Diego’s name is carefully scrawled onto it and Ben sets it aside, mouth dry with unspecified guilt.

“Hand me my letter.” Ben complies, carelessly tossing his letter to Klaus, only for the boy in question to flicker as the envelope hits the floor. He slides down the wall and picks it up, reading it.

Ben looks to his own letter, swallowing. What manner of horrors laid there?

He looks at Diego, fingers trembling.

He picks up his letter and slowly unseals it, breath catching.

— 𖥸 —

_ Klaus- _

~~i _wish you weren’t dead._ ~~

~~ _b ut even more than that, i wish you’d haunted me the way you haunt the rest. you haunt Ben’s head, you haunt Diego’s heart, and you torment Vanya with your absence. Why can’t i see you? _ ~~

~~i~~ ~~ _ ~~t~~ ried to be haunted too. But I met a monster, and he haunted my dreams instead._ ~~

~~w _hy am i always left behind?_ ~~

_ ~~w hy has no one ever loved me? ~~ _

_ ~~ Klaus- ~~ _

_ ~~ I- ~~ _

_ ~~i miss you ~~ _

_ ~~w hy did you have to die ~~ _

_ ~~ why ~~ _

_ ~~ Klaus ~~ _

~~_ i tried so hard _ ~~

~~_ i miss you  _ ~~

~~_ did you miss me? _ ~~

_ allison _

— 𖥸 —

#####  luther

Ben says Allison is in LA, which Luther doesn’t believe. Because none of them have money to spend, beyond himself and that’s only because  _ Father trusts him _ ,  _ and him alone. _ but also because Allison is too kind to make it into Hollywood. She’s too soft and quite frankly, he thought it was a phase, this whole actress thing.

But she isn’t anywhere he looks, and the police station laughs at him, so he marches home, angrily. She’ll come home, he thinks to himself. She’ll be back because there is nowhere else the Umbrella Academy can be.

But he sees Vanya, quietly packing her things, eyes swollen from tears, gaze hateful as she stares at him, and he wonders to himself if that’s really true. But he pushes that aside- Vanya is just Number Seven, never gifted and never a part of them.

She is alone, an outlier, the ignored. She isolated and unloved, the variable no one wants to deal with.

But her voice echoes throughout the halls when she ‘persuades’ Father to bankroll her education, a local prestigious college. She swears she will leave, and even change her name to remove the stain on the Hargreeves name.

So Vanya Hargeeves disappears into the night, but Luther can see the way Ben checks his phone to read messages, and he realizes that Vanya is not alone, perhaps never was and that Ben still had contact with her, even as he keeps vigil at  _ that bastard’s _ hospital bed. So Vanya stayed in contact with Ben, and Ben sat with Diego, and Klaus (what the hell?), pale and whispery, sometimes lingers as well, and Allison hasn’t shown up and Five is still missing, so-

_ Maybe it’s Luther that’s alone. _

— 𖥸 —

#####  vanya

Vanya's new flat isn’t in the slums, but the hallways smell like weed and piss, and her neighbors have red eyes. It’s almost nostalgic. 

Nothing says home like drug addiction. 

That makes her a bit…angry? She pushes the thought away. Emotions are for well functioning human beings. 

Her phone buzzes, so she sets down her suitcase.

_ allison wrote letters _

_ for me too? _ She types after a pause, not sure if she can take the answer. Ben's response is lightning fast.

_ duh _

_ You want me to bring yours, or _

_ No _ , she types in.  _ im coming over _

She takes a moment to lie on the carpeted floor. 

_Well._ Time to go back to hell.

— 𖥸 —

_ Vanya _ -

_ i’m sorry, you shouldn’t forgive me i left and i couldn’t take you with me i left are you angry are you sad do you care please care _

~~_ please care please pay attention im sorry but im not sorry i left im sorry for leaving you _ ~~

~~_ did you love me i loved you i love you because you are my only sister _ ~~

~~_ do you forgive me i want you to forgive me i need you to forgive me can you please forgive me _ ~~

_ there’s a secret in my head but it’s not mine i can barely remember  _

_ but i fucked you up father made me fuck you up and i can barely remember but the gist of it is- _

_ when I was three or four, Father made me do something i can’t remember what, because i probably rumoured myself to oblivion, but I remember  _

_ there was a padded room, and you were there _

_ i made you do something or told you something _

_ father might’ve made me rumour you _

_ and i can’t even remember what it was _

_~~im sorry im sorry im sorry but i hurt you and i can't even remember~~ _

_ i did something to you, and I hurt you, and i’m so, so sorry. i wish i hadn’t, but we were children and- _

~~_ im sorry for destroying you _ ~~

~~_ your sister, _ ~~

_ allison _

> — 𖥸 —

Vanya storms outside, fingers crumpling the tattered letter, eyes flashing angrily as she slammed the front door shut. Her mind is pure white-hot fury, can't even begin to process her sister's letter right now. Klaus, incorporeal, trails behind her as Ben watches from the window. Klaus eventually floats back into the infirmary.

"The letters aren't great, and Allison has always been protective of V," Klaus begins, voice strained. Ben doesn't move a muscle as Klaus slinks his way into his arms, draping himself on Ben like a lazy cat.

"Are you okay, Ben?" Klaus's eyes look fatigued, but Ben knows he looks worse.

"I don't know," he finally says.

"You should sleep, Benny. You don't look so hot." Ben tries to shrug.

"Too keyed up." And that's an understatement. The Horrors writhe under his skin, thrumming under his veins and choke his heart. The letter blurred against his eyes, and his fingers are shaky.

"We can cuddle?" Ben's default is to shake his head, but he stops. He looks at the boy sequestered on his lap, the boy on the hospital bed, his sister's retreating figure.

"Okay," he whispers. He lets himself be led to the nearest bed, and Klaus spoons him from the back. He's almost sandwiched between Diego and Klaus.

"Okay," he says because this is fine, and he falls asleep to Diego's steady breathing and Klaus's drafty hands stroking his hair.

— 𖥸 —

_Ben_

_did you know that that we're all monsters? you aren't alone_

_everyone else got a gift. i think you'll like secrets better._

_i tried to run away before. i came home with blood ~~between my thighs.~~ _

_he's dead. ~~I rumoured him into oncoming traffic~~_

~~_i loved you even when you were a monster Ben, and now you know why._ ~~

_i'm going to be a star Ben, even if i have to rumour every person in LA to get there._

_you're going to run too, aren't you Ben? take care of Di and Vanya, ~~they're so much more fragile than the rest of us~~_

_Ben, father has seven journals. one for each of us._

_how did he rule out Vanya's powers Ben? how did he know Klaus's powers weren't just schizophrenia? ~~how much does he know?~~_

_i think Vanya had powers ~~but i don't know what happened.~~_

_steal the journals Ben. find out what he knows._

_be kind to Diego please?_

_allison_

_p.s. i took klaus's old leather skirt_

— 𖥸 —

> ##  the dead and the buried
> 
> _ Then it broke, and she awoke again _

you were floating

falling forward, ᵉˣᶜᵉᵖᵗ ʰᵉʳᵉ ᶦˢ ⁿᵒ ᵉⁿᵈ ᵗᵒ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᶠᵃˡˡᶦⁿᵍ

you just continued to fall for a small eternity, the jarring sensation in your stomach intensifying tenfold as if you were on a rollercoaster, rising higher and higher in dreaded, fizzy anticipation, waiting to plunge forward, at the edge of your seat, waiting for the end

except there is no real end because this ride doesn’t have a stopping point, a finish line

you can feel the sensation of yourself dissipate, and you have no sense of body, feeling

you are a mist of thinly held aspirations and you have to hold yourself together in a cloud of self-identity as you begin to fade

ᵈᵒ ʸᵒᵘ ʷᵃⁿᵗ ᵗᵒ ᶠᵃᵈᵉ

do you want to live

ˡᶦᶠᵉ ᶦˢ ᵃ ᵈʳᵉᵃᵐ ˢᵒ ᶠᵃʳ ᵃʷᵃʸ

life is loud

there’s a popping, cracking sensation, like the sound of wrappers crinkling underfoot, the cheers of stadiums, the low growls of beasts unknown

roars and screams and terror and hurt

there is no light, there is only soft hardness, the sharp edges of ice up your spine, burning light that sears you, your bones falling out of their proper pockets and you

ᶜᵃⁿ ˡᵉᵗ ᵍᵒ

can give up, you can be nothing, you can be everything, the grey dull fog of cities and the pebbles in a creek and you can be the sea and the coral and the sharks and the iron rust on the hull of great ships-

a thread of light

ᵃ ʰᵒᵒᵏ, ᵃ ᵇᵃᶦᵗ

something familiar

curiosity wonder longing

_ diego! _ the voice calls out, and you flinch back, the idea of fitting back into a meaty skin, a doll of life again

hurts

𝒹ᵢₑ𝓰ₒ

there is comfort in nothingness

there is soft serene sweetness is staying and letting go of pesky thoughts

negative emotions like pain and hatred and bitterness and anxiety

you can become one with the primordial stew and have no more thoughts ever again

can stay here

𝒹ᵢₑ𝓰ₒ

stay safe

ᵇᵘᵗ

you have never chosen the easy way

you are not kind to yourself

ʸᵒᵘ ⁿᵉᵛᵉʳ ˡᵉᵃʳⁿᵉᵈ ʰᵒʷ

so you gather the bits of yourself

that you have left

that haven’t been washed away by the tide

you imagine the galaxy smiling 

at you, 𝒹ᵢₑ𝓰ₒ

and then you pick our your name from the mumbling void

_ diego. _

_ 𝒹ᵢₑ𝓰ₒ _

and you let yourself be ᵖᵘˡˡᵉᵈ

into

the light

➲

“Ben!” Klaus cries. His face is sheet white, eyes swirling vortexes. Ben turns to him, eyes tired.

"What-"

"I found him!" And Ben blinks, still for a moment as that sinks in. He jumps out of the chair in alarm.

"What? How, is he...is he dead? but his heartbeat? _The monitor?"_

Klaus giggles, spinning around hysterically. "Does it _matter_? I found him, Ben, he's so close I can taste it! I'm going to bring him home!" Shadows warp around him as he slips into the Underworld, the beyond.

Ben laughs, forehead pressed against Diego's fingers. He laughs so hard that he doesn't realise he's crying. 

➲

He was nothing and then he was something. He was somewhere.

The stormy sky, unnatural in its dark-lightness, its impossibility. 

Hell was awfully serene, Diego thought to himself. 

Black sand tickled his feet as he walked along the edge of the shore. The sunrise illuminated the shorefront of wherever he was, and Diego walked to a clear pool of water, trapped in the rock. The tide pool was relatively still.

He could see his face. Or what used to be his face, when he was seven. He pokes his cheek, bending down. His reflection smiles at him, and he gasps because he hadn’t smiled.

He doesn’t know how to smile anymore.

He looks happy. He looks soft and cheerful and loved and Diego has never been loved and what if he just touches the surface of the water-

He reaches forward, just a little touch-

“The longer you entertain them, the harder it is to leave,” says a voice from behind him. He jumps back from the water and whirls around in alarm.

It’s a girl, walking by. She’s steering a bike alongside herself, and Diego wants to brush her off as a tourist, but something in her eyes scares him, so he moves back a little.

“Self-preservation. Huh. Didn’t think any of you’d have that.” The girl tilted her head in contemplation. She moved her hands and the tide stopped, mid-flow and Diego gapes at her. She'd already turned around, gesturing for him to follow.

“Come on, the faster you see him, the sooner I can kick him out. Stupid bastard has been here for days now.” Dumfounded, Diego follows behind her, enjoying the way his little feet sink in the sand. The girl walks along the shore, and Diego can see, now that the water is frozen in time, that there’s something bubbling underneath.

Something nefarious that way lies.

He’s scared of whatever it is, and the little girl seems worried about it as well if the pauses and her looks are anything to go by.

There’s a small hut in the distance, and Diego wonders about a person who’d live so close to the shore. Aren’t they scared? Are they stupid?

He wonders about this mad person who annoyed the girl.

He sees a mop of tawny brown curls, and something unfurls in his stomach.

Grey eyes hidden, the person is drawing figures using a piece of driftwood on the sand. Diego swallows. The girl side eyes him.

He makes a movement to hide behind her, but she twists out of the way.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” The girl pushes him forward, and Diego stumbles closer to the boy.

Diego is dead, isn’t he?

Klaus is wearing a crisp lace shirt with form-fitting blue shorts, and he hasn’t aged a day since he was burying. Klaus stares at him, eyes wary.

Diego doesn’t even realise that his eyes are leaking tears.

Klaus’s face drops and he rushes towards him, arms enfolding him as he’s being pulled against Klaus’s shoulder.

He smells like seawater, and Diego sobs harder.

“Di, I’m so sorry, baby. Please stop crying, can you look at me? Please?” It takes a few minutes, with Diego holding onto Klaus like a limpet. Klaus really hasn’t aged a day, but his eyes are a lot darker than before, older somehow. Diego, a seven-year-old, fits neatly into his lap as he lets out muffled wailing.

“Shh. Di, I’m so unbelievably sorry, I wanted to tell you, but I was so wrapped up in you just accepting me being there, I didn’t want to jinx it, but I’m so sorry, I’m sorry that I couldn’t keep you from getting hurt-” Diego just hears a stream of words, unable to process anything. He’s just so overwhelmed that Klaus could’ve sang a Britney Spears song and he still would’ve cried.

Not the least because Klaus really couldn’t sing.

He does eventually pull back from Klaus’s bony shoulders, mostly because he’s drained from all the crying. Klaus watches him, eyes worried, hands just patting his back gently.

“So...I’m dead?” Diego can’t help but blurt out. He doesn’t particularly understand what’s happening.

Klaus starts, shoulder’s twitching in alarm. “Uh...what?” Diego points to himself.

“Me? Dead?” Klaus balks.

“Uhh no? No way, no? You are not dead, sir?” Now it’s Diego’s turn to frown.

“Really? If I wasn’t dead, how am I talking to you?” Klaus just looks confused.

“Di...you’ve been talking to me for six months?” Diego’s face scrunches up. What the hell, that wasn’t Klaus! That was his conscience or something manifesting.

“But I’ve always been talking to you?”

“Wait, what?”

“I began seeing you after you died? Hallucinating, auditory shit? It’s not new?” Klaus rubs his face with his hand, tired, muttering a few choice words before looking up in awe.

“Is that why you didn’t give a bigger reaction when I showed up?” He did what?

“...what.”

“I came back? Like a while back, and Ben said we had to wait to leave, for legal purposes and shit? But I got bored, so I basically followed you around...like didn’t you notice a difference? Anything? Wasn’t I acting weird? You didn’t really react and I was super concerned but I didn’t wanna say anything weird so...” 

“You always acted weird.”

“Oh wow, thanks.”

“My hallucinations were pretty accurate, I guess. I literally couldn’t tell the difference.”

“I...don't know if I should be flattered or just sad.” At that, Diego turns away, looking at the sea, face dark.

So.

His brother wasn’t dead. Kumbaya, except about the whole not telling him, and causing unnecessary pain to him and everyone else. He pulls out of the hug, ignoring Klaus’s cries to wait.

Diego has been waiting forever and a day. Something cruel inside of him wants Klaus to hurt too.

He approaches the water, feeling it call to him in its comforting serenity. Except it’s not actually calm, is it?

The water is still, but he can see dark monsters writhing inside.

_ Tentacles. _

_ Ben. _

Why would the Horrors show up here? He stands a safe distance away, terrified of being dragged inside the whirling pool of death. They beckon towards him, and suddenly he longs to touch- 

Klaus hoists him on his shoulder and pulls him back, not stopping until they’re a safe distance away. Diego lets him manhandle him into a sitting position.

“They’ve been here since you died. I think they’re trying to find you because of Ben.”

“But why?” Klaus gives him a  _ look. _

“Ben is waiting for you, dumbass. You didn’t see his face-” Diego shakes his head. That’s a clusterfuck Diego doesn’t even want to touch.

“So why am I here? Why are you here, and not…?” Klaus scratches the back of his head in embarrassment.

“Well, you’re here because at one point, you were so close to death that I could grab you. I called you here. I’ve been waiting for a while.” Diego feels queasy.

“How long have I been asleep?” Klaus hisses softly, like a tire deflating.

“Not...as long as you think? Maybe a few days. But in this dimension, it’s been a whole lot longer. I’ve been searching for you soul….for about two months?” Diego looks down at his little baby hands. He had callouses even then.

“You found me?” Klaus looks at him, creek pebble eyes wide. 

“Of course I did. I’d have never stopped looking.” Diego nods slightly, feeling a little bit less torn up.

“I….where are we? Is this...heaven? Or purgatory? Or…?” Klaus shrugs, knobby shoulders like wings.

“Short version? The afterlife isn’t as simple as good and bad, okay? It’s multiple realms, woven together by fate and destiny and sometimes just chance? God isn’t benevolent, really. She’s just here to chew gum and cause wars.”

“I heard that you prick!” Comes a voice from the distance. Diego starts- God was that little girl? Klaus catches his expression and smirks softly.

“God is a little girl with a bike.” Diego wants to bang his head into the wall. Something odd occurs to him.

“Wait...you said...that  **you **pulled me? Out? How did you…?” Klaus’s cheeks darken in embarrassment.

“I….might have some sway over death. And this realm.” Diego looks at him, mouth agape.

“What.”

“It’s not some master of death bullshit, okay? I’m just like...a nice little exception to the normal rules. I can’t really die, I can find people I love, etc. I might have a longer than normal lifespan...but only time can tell.”

“So basically you’re the god of death.”

“In a conversation about Thanatos and Hades, I’m certainly neither. Honestly, death is more like a game a few can play.” He has a dark expression on his face. 

“And...like...you’ve got the guidebook? Like a few cheat codes, or something?”

“Or something.” Klaus looks at Diego, expression solemn. “It’s not...ideal, honestly.” Diego bites his lips.

Here’s a question that’s going to hurt. He’s going to ask anyway.

“Did you know that you were going to come back when you died?” Klaus shakes his head.

“I died. For real. And I didn’t wake up for a long, long time. And even when I did, I just kept suffocating repeatedly, until I learned to kind of stay in an undead state. And then I couldn’t really haunt anyone, I just had to go with the flow. Not to mention, by the time I began remembering who I was, my body had decayed really badly, so I had to basically rebuild myself. I probably fucked up my insides.”

Klaus does look darker, as if his skin was stained red. It’s a garish effect.

“Where was I, before this? Why can’t I remember…?”

“Look, Di...you didn’t actually die. So basically, you were still tethered to your body. And for why you can’t remember…” 

“I think that’s up to you. You’re doing that to yourself.”

“Maybe it’s best for me to forget then.” Klaus nods in understanding.

And then Diego asks the niggling question that’s been bothering him.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell all of us when you came back? We could’ve….I don’t know, but if you’d just said something, I…”

“Ben thinks I agreed to stay on the DL because I wanted to wait til shit was safer, til we had documentation to spring everyone, but… ” Klaus clenches his jaw.

“But?”

“But I was actually worried that the coming back to life thing was temporary, that I’d just crumble back into dirt one day.” Klaus closes his eyes, expression pained.

“If I didn’t overtly tell anyone, then…then when I died again, I wouldn’t cause more pain.” Sighing he continues, “but I couldn’t help but follow you around, you know? It was good practice to just…get a hold of my powers again, but I was just so…lonely.” His voice ends off in a whine that grates on Diego’s ears even though he tries to keep his temper under check.

Diego smiles bitterly. So. His emotional states were entertaining, were they? He tries to summon up the appropriate rage required, but he just feels hollow. He listens as Klaus continue to talk about their plans, wooden as a tree.

He should be happy, his brother is back. He should be ecstatic, and yet he’s not.

Why?

Why did they want him? Haven’t they realized that he ruins everything he touches?

Why? So they can make their little plans and he can just go with them, without autonomy.

Why do they need him, can’t they let him be?

Klaus claps his hands abruptly, and Diego jumps a little. 

“So,” his brother begins. “So, shall we get going?”

“What?” Klaus smiles, confused. He gestures wildly as he repeats his words. “We need to get going, don’t we? Everyone is worried.” And Diego narrows his eyes, frowning softly, before turning away from him.

“Di?” Klaus asks, voice unsure.

“You should get going, They’re probably waiting for you.” He says, beginning to walk away. 

Klaus puts a hand on his shoulder and gently turns him around.

“What do you mean? We’re supposed to go back together, and then we’ll live with V, and then…” Diego gently lifts Klaus’s hand off his shoulder. There’s a little crease between Klaus’s eyebrows. Diego, still in his seven-year-old body, smoothes it out.

“You guys…made all these plans, right?” He asks softly, and Klaus nods.

“But maybe you should’ve considered…what we wanted as well.” Klaus opens his mouth, indignant.

“Di, why the fuck would you-” Diego shushes him and waits till he’s perfectly quiet before starting.

“Klaus,” he begins, and here’s the hard part, vocalizing his wants. He’s never really been good at telling people he wanted, back when he was alive, but he’s gone now. So speaking up won’t hurt anyone anymore.

“Klaus,” he starts again, looking straight into his brother’s eyes.

“I don’t really  _ want _ to go back.” And lets himself enjoy Klaus’ absolutely dumbfounded look as he turns on his heel and walks away.

➲

“Ben! I fucked up.” And Ben, curled up against Diego, opens his eyes to see his ghostly brother pacing.

“What happened?” Klaus doesn’t stop moving, just begins ranting about possibilities and fucked up parenting.

“Klaus,” he tries again. At this, Klaus stops waving his hands and instead just slumps.

“He doesn’t  _ want _ to come back.”

"What?"

➲

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i basically had to patch up plot holes here- like allison wasn't even supposed to be a thing, but she kicked my door in and demanded 75% of the words? and she wasn't even physically there, wtf?
> 
> diego is a sad boi. i really considered killing him, but i liked him too much. but you know...THAT CAN CHANGE
> 
> luther...go fuck yourself
> 
> Vanya has emotions but they're muted by the pills, so yeah. btw, if they do leave the house without murdering reggie, they're all totally going to crash at her place, dont even lie
> 
> klaus and di got to spend time together, but they're both terrible at communication, so that went terribly. 
> 
> diego: death is peaceful. can i stay?  
> Klaus: nO   
> diego: pretty pls  
> Klaus: diEgO nO
> 
> haha im so fucking tired of everything.

**Author's Note:**

> So I know this series is based primarily on Ben and Klaus, but Creepy!Ben is totally valid and our boy is a wreck™. Also, I love Vanya, and she is important™ to the story because, as you know, they're running away with her.
> 
> And next time, we shall see each sibling discovering Klaus, Ben stealing shit, Klaus being terrifying after realising the ghosts aren't gone, and a sneak peak at diego being a mama's boy. 
> 
> And Grace, of course, is our Queen.
> 
> Love you guys- I fricking love the comments! I used a lot of ideas from yall for this fic, so feel free to give me ideas. Or just tell me if it sucks lol.


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